Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Salikoko S. Mufwene holds the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. He is also Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. He conducts research on linguistic evolution from an ecological perspective, notably on the phylogenetic emergence of language and on language speciation. The latter focuses in particular on the emergence of Creole speakers and other forms of indigenization of European colonial languages, as well as on language vitality. His numerous publications include The Ecology of Language Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2001, translated into Mandarin by Commercial Press and considered a reference work in China), Créoles, écologie sociale, évolution linguistique (L'Harmattan, 2005), Language Evolution: Contact, competition and change (Continuum Press, 2008), Colonisation, globalisation, vitalité du français (co-edited with Cécile B. Vigouroux, Odile Jacob, 2014), Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives (co-edited with Christophe Coupé & François Pellegrino, Cambridge University Press, 2017), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact (2 volumes co-edited with Anna María Escobar, 2022). He is the founding director of the Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact series ; and is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, theAmerican Philosophical Society, and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Salikoko S. Mufwene has been invited to occupy the annual Francophone Worlds Chair at the Collège de France for 2023-2024.