What can African literatures and languages teach us about the human experience?
The question above is at the core of my research and teaching. I specialise in literatures from Africa and the diaspora with a focus on contemporary (post 1990s) popular culture, poetry and literature. My work lies in the intersection between the politics of literature written/created either by Africans, in Africa or in languages of Africa in relation to how we/others define space and place. In particular, I am interested in the processes that underscore the production, circulation and consumption of African literature. A question that recurs throughout my research is the relationship between language production and literary form and its shaping effects in people’s lives. My research is interregional, cutting between West African and East Africa, with a focus on Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania.
I have worked on topics such as the ways in which hip-hop and poetry and experienced in Tanzania, how death is narrated in African literature, how fieldwork can reshape literary studies, how African language literatures belong to the digital literary eco-system and the place of African literature in world literature.
Research Projects
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Afrophone Digital Literature
Do African language literatures have the right to exist in the digital space? My research examines the politics attached to digital ecosystems through the examples of Swahili (Tanzania) and Ga (Ghana). How do writers in marginalised African languages make their literature visible in the digital space and how do these reading and writing communities and practices?
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Fieldwork Experiences and Practices in Africa
This collaborative project employed multidisciplinary perspectives to discuss how fieldwork can reconfigure the research experience in African Studies. My work uses the lenses of space and decoloniality to argue for relocating Africa in African Studies by centering the lived experiences of interlocutors while exploring ethical research. I also discuss the role of fieldwork in literary studies. I co-edited a special issue that features essays from the project.
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African Popular Culture
In studying popular culture, I am interested in how artists and fans experience aesthetic practices such as hip-hop and poetry. I also examine the organisation of popular practices and the connection/disconnect between expectations and ephemeral experiences. I have a series of papers here.
My first academic monograph, Aesthetic Vibes, is currently under preparation from this published.
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Narrating Death in Africa
How does the idea of death shape living and death practices in Africa? My research examines elegaic poetry and its narration of death with a focus on contemporary English poetry in Ghana and the Ghanaian diaspora. Which elegaic forms are useful for speaking about the postcolonial experience?
I am co-editing a forth coming special issue on ‘Narrating Death and Mourning’.