Walter Bisang has been professor of general and comparative linguistics at JGU since 1992. From 1999 to 2008, he was coordinator of the Collaborative Research Center “Cultural and Linguistic Contacts” and from 2009 to 2015, he was spokesperson of the Research Center Social and Cultural Studies Mainz (SoCuM). Bisang's major research interests focus on the comparison of different linguistic theories, grammaticalization, and language contact. He is engaged in the study of languages from all over the world, particularly from East and Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the Caucasus.