Philippe Maurer-Cecchini (1951) is an independent researcher who studied Romance philology and general linguistics at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), and at San Marcos University of Lima (Peru). His University of Zurich doctoral thesis was on the tense-aspect-mood system of Curaçaoan Papiamentu. He also published descriptive grammars of three Portuguese-based creoles of the Gulf of Guinea (Angolar, Principense, and, together with Tjerk Hagemeijer from the University of Lisbon, of Fa d'Ambô), and is a co-editor of the Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures and of The survey of pidgin and creole languages. He is currently working on Sutsilvan Romansh, North Occitan dialects, and Francoprovençal spoken in Switzerland.