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Clarissa Vierke, born in 1979, has been professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth since 2014. With a scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation, she studied African Languages, Anthropology and Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth and the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. She wrote her PhD about the specific poetics of a narrative peotic genre from the Swahili Coast in Eastern Africa. Since then, she has worked on manuscript cultures in Eastern Africa and travelling texts along the East African Coast from Kenya to Mozambique and across the Indian Ocean. She has also expanded her interest in Aesthetics to focus on other poetic genres.

In 2012, she won the Wissenschaftspreis of the University of Bayreuth and the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-prize of the German Research Council (DFG).

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My research is grounded in socio- and applied linguistics and in African Studies, branching out from there into various other fields and disciplines like philosophy, new materialism, linguistic anthropology, and scholarship around language and race. Conceptual innovation for social and epistemic justice is the motto that holds my work together. In my Ph.D. “Relanguaging language from a South African township school” (published by Multilingual Matters 2021) from the University of Cape Town, I re-conceptualize named languages with the help of primary school teachers, and develop relanguaging as a theoretical and didactic model for English teaching. Currently I questions semiotic and representational approaches to language, trying to conceptualize the materiality of words in relation to different bodies, and asking how understanding this relationship can help in encountering each other ethically across divides. Empirically I here focusse on encounters between differently racialized bodies and BLM protest placards in Germany, and on the potential of these encounters to further ethical relationships between the white majority and Afro-diasporic people. Together with Irene Brunotti I am also beginning to develop a second research focus around African language teaching, which aims at centering the marginalized onto-epistemologies expressed in, and lived with and through African languages, and at rethinking concepts of words and language from within relational ontologies of the global South, more specifically from within African onto-epistemologies. In my transdiciplinary teaching I experiment with decolonial approaches that aim to create spacious, challenging and un/comfortable learning environments – comfortable enough to be able to learn collaboratively, yet uncomfortable enough to push everybody (the lecturer included) to ask tough questions and to stay and grapple with the conceptual, social and sometimes emotional trouble they might bring.

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My research interests include English language studies and sociolinguistics. I have conducted studies on Nigerian English with focus on the social and cultural influences on the development of English in the Nigerian situation and linguistic features of Nigerian English at various levels – phonological, lexical as well as pragmatics. The focus of my studies on sociolinguistics includes the multifarious sociocultural factors that influence variations and creativity in language use; the pragmatics and semiotics of language use in different linguistic contexts; language and conflict as well as the repertoires and linguistic practices of diverse groups especially in North East Nigeria.
My research work also involves a project on the development of Jukun language. The project includes the documentation of different aspects of Jukun language and culture. One outcome of the project is the development of curriculum for the teaching of Jukun language in basic education in Nigeria. The curriculum has been approved by the government and put to use in primary schools in the community. The Jukun language development project group is currently working on the development of textbooks and primers to facilitate literacy skills in early grade classes.

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	+234 8036649795
	Federal University Wukari 200 Katsina Ala Road Wukari Taraba State, Nigeria

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Samuel Ndogo is an alumnus of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany, where he graduated with a PhD in African Literature. Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Literature, Linguistics, Foreign Languages and Film Studies, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. He is also the local partner of the RecAf Project at Moi University. His research interests include literatures in African languages, translation, literary theory, arts and aesthetics, history of education and higher learning in Africa, popular and cultural studies, autobiographical writings, social media and communication, diaspora and postcolonial studies. Ndogo has published several journal articles and book chapters on these areas. He is a founding member and project partner of the Kenyan Chapter of the African Bayreuth International Alumni Network (afriBIAN) as well as a member of several professional associations, including, the Kenya Oral Literature Association (KOLA); the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA); the African Literature Association (ALA); the Vereinigung für Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland e.V. (VAD) (Association for African Studies in Germany); the BIGSAS Alumni Network. He is a recipient of several fellowships and academic exchange programs.

Administratively, he is a seasoned administrator having taken up various consultancy, mentorship, management and leadership positions within the university and beyond including heading the Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Moi University Kenya.

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	samndogo@yahoo.com
	+254 722 736 620
	Department of Literature, Linguistics, Foreign Languages & Film Studies, School of Arts & Social Sciences Moi University P.O. Box 3900-30100 ELDORET, KENYA

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Simthembile Xeketwana is a lecturer in the Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). His research interest is within the language and education, in particular genre-based pedagogy in schools. He emphases on teaching different genres as per the CAPS specifications. He is also interested in the use of language as a meaning making tool, in the South African diverse classrooms. Furthermore, Simthembile is interested in the use of language in education by learners and teachers to ensure that the linguistic repertories. A secondary interest is within literature and literary analysis and how literature should be maintained to make African languages visible.

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	asx@sun.ac.za
	+27685394783
	Faculty of Education, Curriculum Studies Room 2002 GG Cilliers Building, c/o Ryneveld and Crozier Street, Stellenbosch Tel: 0218083935 Consultation hours: 09h00 - 14h30

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After a degree in modern foreign languages and literatures (German, English and French), Flavia Aiello studied African languages and literatures at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, specialising in Swahili, where she also obtained a PhD with research on taarab sung poetry in Zanzibar. She taught Swahili language and literature at the University of Calabria for several years and then moved to “L’Orientale”, where she is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies. Her main interests are contemporary oral and written Swahili literature (including children’s literature) and translation (history, theory and practice). She has recently coordinated a research unit on Congolese Swahili varieties and their literary and artistic expressions, as part of a Project of Relevant National Interest funded by the Italian Ministry for Universities for the period 2017-2020. She has also worked on terminology and lexicography and is currently coordinating a project for the creation of an online Swahili-Italian dictionary. She is presently a member of the Executive Board of ASAI (Association for African Studies in Italy), the main association of Italian Africanists. She is the author of numerous publications in national and international journals and volumes, as well as some translations of modern Swahili literature, both prose and poetry.

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	faiello@unior.it
	Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo, Palazzo Corigliano, Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, 80134, Napoli, Italy

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I am a researcher of verbal arts (lyric song, proverbs, oral and written poetry) in African languages (Kerewe, Shona, Swahili in the Congolese and Tanzanian varieties) using an approach that I have defined as analogical, based on the bodily experience of the text and using the tools of comparison and translation as analytical elements. This approach focuses on text comprehension using different elements such as reading aloud, recitation, memorisation and transmediation, but also translation and comparison. The latter are the analytical tools that help me to translate these relationships created between the text and the body, perceptions, and understanding in an academic way. My approach to research is immersive, not only in the text, but also in the local reality. I tend to do extensive fieldwork to fully understand the local culture. I have researched the Swahili poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi and Ebrahim Hussein, the verbal arts in Congolese Swahili of Katanga, Kivu and Kisangani through the study of Sando Marteau, Patrick Mudekereza and Remmy Ongala, the comparison of modern Shona and Swahili poetry, and the comparison of written and oral Kerewe Swahili poetry.

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	roberto.gaudioso@unior.it

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Brady Blackburn is a research associate of literatures in African languages as part of the research project Recalibrating Afrikanistik. He studied English Literature during his undergraduate in Denver, USA, during which time he did a semester abroad at the University of Ghana, Legon before obtaining his MA in African Verbal and Visual Arts at the University of Bayreuth. He is currently pursuing his PhD, for which he is researching the publication of periodicals in African languages. His main research interests are the production and consumption of African-language literature with a particular focus on West African languages. He’s also fascinated by sociolinguistics, language ideologies, reading cultures, and LINGOs. In the background, he runs the NGO Untold International, which provides language arts resources and education in rural Ghana.

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Kaitlyn Medina is currently a master student of intercultural Anglophone studies at the University of Bayreuth. She graduated with honors with her BA in English literature in 2013 before co-founding the NGO Untold International in 2015, for which she served as chairman of the board until 2022. She is writing her MA thesis on metamorphosis and constructions of space in Richard Powers' The Overstory, and her research interests include critical posthumanisms, ecocriticism, decoloniality, and cultural semiotics. Her responsibilities with the RecAf project include graphic design, social media management, and editorial project management.

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Ojo Blank is currently a master student and graduate assistant at the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig. They studied African Studies in their bachelor in Leipzig and focus on decolonial/postcolonial theory, epistemologies and subaltern knowledge production. They are responsible for the coordination of fellowships and the reading group, the organisation of the Grant Application Workshops and co-produce the RecAf podcast series Afrikanists Assemble.

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I have just completed my master’s in ‘African studies’ at the university of Leipzig. My thesis focused on language and what is made to matter in language and what isn’t. I argued that we, as scholars, are not mirrors reflecting language and making it legible to others, rather we co-produce the language we study. We play an active role in its production. I did so through thinking with Albert Kropf’s ‘K-word – English’ Dictionary. During my fellowship, I intend to take this research further. During my thesis I touched on linguistic fields like raciolinguistics and de- and postcolonial (socio)linguistics intertwined with new materialism, indigenous studies to approach the linguistic modification of taboo words in the North and South. During my fellowship I will build on this research and gain topic specific, hands-on research on the dialogues present around linguistic modifications in Xhosa in South Africa.

Project Title: Mattering-forth a ‘“K-word” – English Dictionary’ as un/racializing intra-action

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As an avid researcher deeply committed to the preservation of African indigenous music and languages, I have focused my academic journey on African cultural heritage, earning a Master's degree (Cum Laude) and a PhD in Musicology. My research encompasses African indigenous musical practices, knowledge systems, languages and cultural traditions. I am passionate about contributing to the broader theme of African language revitalisation through musical practices. Currently, my research project titled "Linguistic Revitalisation through Song: Ethnomusicological Approaches to Language Revitalization within the Xhosa Community in South Africa", I explore how traditional Xhosa music acts as a powerful tool for preserving the vibrancy of the Xhosa language and cultural identity. Against the backdrop of linguistic diversity and rich cultural traditions in South Africa, preserving and revitalising indigenous languages, particularly Xhosa, have become paramount. This research contributes to the broader dialogue on recalibrating conventional approaches to the preservation of indigenous languages through the lens of ethnomusicology.

Project Title: Linguistic Revitalisation through Song: Ethnomusicological Approaches to Language Revitalisation within the Xhosa Community in South Africa

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I am Elizabeth Nafula Khaemba, a DPhil student at Moi University, Kenya in the department of Linguistics, Literature, Foreign Languages and Film Studies. My study examines the forms of language used by reporters to (un)mask power relations that govern the construction of murder stories associated with prominent personalities in print media in Kenya and the implications of these linguistic practices on both the social actors involved and on the larger sociopolitical context. Many studies which have analyzed media discourses on murder crimes have focused so much on critical analyses that have centred on the selection of particularly texts and scrutinizing discursive features used in them to indicate sociocultural practices like creation of asymmetrical power relations, naturalization of ideologies, propagation of social inequalities and injustices etc. However, the way these linguistic. strategies serve the purpose of revealing these sociocultural practices, in these studies, still remains an area gestured at, which could be unpacked more if ethnographic materials were to be incorporated in such analyses. So, by incorporating such materials, my study reveals these detrimental sociopolitical practices.

Project Title: Language and Power: Reporting Murders Associated with Prominent Personalities in Print Media in Kenya

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Orlando Fernão, is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. He has been developing research in sound archives at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin as well as on the material heritage of the Ndau community at the Grassi Museum, the University Archive and the Institute of Anthropology of the Leipzig University. Since 2022, he has participated in the biannual world conference of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD), as well as in some of the Council's study groups, such as the African Musics and the Sources and Archives for Music and Sound Studies. He has also presented some of his findings in some universities, including the University of Vienna, Graz, Leipzig, Bayreuth and Eduardo Mondlane. He has recently been involved as a consultant for the digitisation of the music archive of the National Radio of São Tomé and Príncipe, for which he conceived the digitisation project in coordination with the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.

Project Title: Linguistic change in a century of history: studying aspects of the evolution and preservation of the Ndau language through sound recordings, dictionary entries and traditional song lyrics.

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A study focusing on the linguistic cues evident in the speech patterns of widows within the Wukari community with the aim of uncovering a critical aspect of the human experience – how the burden of loss requires painstaking interpretation and analysis from the victim’s cultural environment. This study falls within the subdiscipline of applied linguistics.

Project Title: Narrating loss: speech pattern of women widowed during crises in Wukari community of Nigeria

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This fellowship would provide invaluable support for my research project, serving as its initial phase. My aim is to undertake a systematic exploration of digital lexicons, with a focus on social media platforms such as Telegram and Instagram, and mostly on gay dating apps like Grindr and Planet Romeo. The primary objective of this digital lexical investigation is to document and analyze the evolving linguistic landscape that emerges within digital environments, particularly among self-identified gay and bisexual men utilizing dating apps in Tanzania and Kenya. Within these contexts, individuals frequently employ unique terminologies and adapt existing linguistic expressions to convey their identities, desires, and experiences.This research represents a pivotal phase in documenting and analyzing the dynamic lexical landscape, providing insight into the nuanced relationship between youth language and the experiences of self-identified gay men within the framework of globalization. As such, it makes a significant contribution to lavender linguistics and gender studies in Africa.

Project Title: Unveiling the Linguistic Landscape: Exploring Swahili Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM) Vocabulary in East Africa Through Traditional and Digital Dimensions.

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Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck is a linguistic anthropologist with interests in postcolonial linguistics and the sociology of linguistics. Her research interests have progressed from interaction and conversation analysis to ethnomethodology, praxeology and Science and Technology Studies. She has published about “speaking objects” and media in popular culture, HIV/AIDS prevention in Eastern Africa, on urban languages, language and development, and language philosophy. In 2010 she received an award for an article on HIV-prevention (Beck 2009, 2016) by the KfW for practically relevant development research, a study at the intersection of the sociology of knowledge production, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Regionally she focuses on Eastern Africa and Swahili, Herero (Namibia), but with some interests in Central and Southern Africa. Empirically she works in the fields of Swahili Studies, urban studies, medical anthropology, science and technology studies. She is principal investigator in the project „Recalibrating Afrikanistik”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation 2019-2026 (2027), and “Doing the City” (DFG, 2017-2020).

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	rmbeck@uni-leipzig.de
	+49 (0)341 - 97 37031
	office: 2.2.05 (house 2, 2nd floor, room 05) consultation hour: We. 9:00-11:00 pm and upon appointment

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Martin Orwin studied Arabic and Amharic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London before turning to Somali and completing a PhD on the phonology of that language. Since the early 1990s he worked at SOAS teaching and researching Somali language and literature before moving to the University of Naples "L'Orientale" in 2020. His research focusses on language use in Somali poetry with a particular interest in metre and how Somali poetry reflects ideas of 'lyric' poetry as expressed in some of the wider literature on that subject. Another research interest is music on which he has written a little both theoretically and with regard to Somali poetry performance specifically. He is currently writing up ideas on the modes of performance of Somali poetry. He is a keen literary translator of Somali poetry into English and has published translations in a number of outlets and has written a little on that process.

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	morwin@unior.it
	Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo, Palazzo Corigliano, Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, 80134, Napoli, Italy

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Christa van der Walt is a professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where she is currently also Vice-Dean Research. She has a D Litt in Applied Linguistics from the University of Pretoria. Her interests focus on multilingual learning and teaching and the development of academic literacies. She received the prestigious Von Humboldt fellowship in 1996 and again in 2010 and 2017. She is the sole author of a book published in 2013 by Multilingual Matters, titled Multilingual Higher Education: Beyond English-medium Orientations. Her latest publication is a book that she co-edited with Prof David Palfreyman, titled Academic Biliteracies: Multilingual Repertoires in Higher Education.

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	+27 21 808 2284
	Department Curriculum Studies Private Bag X1 Matieland 7602 Stellenbosch, South Africa

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The Moi University Focal Person for “Recalibrating Afrikanistik”, Tom Michael Mboya, is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Moi University, Kenya, where he also had all his university schooling (BA, MPhil, DPhil), and a Research Associate of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Mboya is also the current Academic Coordinator of the Moi University African Cluster Centre (Moi–ACC) of the “Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies” Cluster of Excellence of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Mboya researches the popular music of Kenya and East African literature in English. His scholarly articles have been published in Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies; Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society; Social Dynamics: Journal of African Cultural Studies; Postcolonial Text; Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa; Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies; The Nairobi Journal of Literature: the Journal of the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi; Chemchemi: International Journal of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; The Egerton Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education and Maarifa: A Journal of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Mboya is a published poet and an award–winning short story writer. In addition, he has published extensively in the Kenyan mass media. Mboya’s national and international professional extension service includes External Examination duties for various universities; Peer Reviewing for several reputable journals; consultative work with education sector agencies of the Kenyan government, namely the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC); and the mentorship of upcoming writers through forums like the National Book Development Council of Kenya.

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	+254 736 207409
	Moi-ACC ICDC Building Moi University P.O. Box 3900 30100-Eldoret. Kenya

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IKYER Godwin Aondofa lectures in the department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Wukari. His research interests include mimetic and cultural codes, applied folklore, joke culture, metaphoric witchcraft,film and performance studies. Boko Haram Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster explores the relatively new aspect of jokes on disaster, and in relation to the emerging textual, verbal and media arts practices. With jokes on disaster come the new ways of language use to correspond with the thematic of Modernity.The emergence of Boko Haram insurgency came in the wake of the strengthening of democratic practice in Nigeria. A new wave of freedom followed the dispensation, and with it, the strengthening of the will to protest domination and injustices of all kinds. Also uncontrollable arms penetrated wrong hands, and the neoliberal taste got consumed in the strong desire for reckless killings. The jokes on the disaster followed soon after in various languages to reflect the odd side of life confronting Nigeria. Languages added new uses, words introduced and verbal arts gain in expression. The media showed it.

Project Title: Boko Haram Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster: Gamut of Textual Practice, Verbal Arts,, Media Practice, Language Use and the thematic of Modernity

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This project is part of my PhD thesis and will form chapter four of my thesis. The project examines three fictional texts set in East Africa that describe, the trauma of marginalization that results in Genocide, Civil war and Election Violence.

Project Title: The Trauma of Marginalization and Testimony of Trauma in Political and Genocide Fiction.

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I am Tajudeen Abodunrin Osunniran, a Senior Lecturer in French Language and Linguistics, Department of Foreign Languages, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. My research interests include Phonology, Morphosyntax, Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics.
I am a research fellow at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” within the framework of the project Recalibrating Afrikanistik (RecAf). My research project examines the interplay between verbal and non-verbal means of communication used in Covid-19 cartoons to depict the challenges Ivorians faced during the pandemic, the socio-cultural practices displayed towards the new reality, how cartoons served as tool to sensitize the public and criticize (in)actions of the government and the role of humour in conveying the intended messages. The study relies on data culled from Gbich!, a weekly humorous and satirical Ivoirian newspaper. The research is significant in that it will reveal the impact of that newspaper in portraying ideologies and social practices of the Ivoirian community. It will also add to the existing body of knowledge on discourses on African representations, attitudes and socio-cultural practices in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Project Title: Social Satire and Humour in Covid-19 Media Cartoons in Côte d’Ivoire: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

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Sola Ogunbayo, Ph.D., poet, literary critic and lecturer, holds a doctorate degree in English with special interest in poetry. His thesis entitled "Prophetic Myths in the Selected Poetry of William Blake and Christopher Okigbo" is a comparative study of how certain myths can be deployed as archetypes of future happening. His penchant for comparative close reading of texts using literary theories extends to other genres like prose and non-fiction materials as respectively exemplified in the maiden edition of Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore( 2011) and a special edition of Nokoko (Carleton University, 2021) where the works of Ben Okri, Zakes Mda and Pius Adesanmi are examined as distinctive postcolonial texts. A RecAF fellow, Ogunbayo teaches in the Department of English, University of Lagos and can be reached through oogunbayo@unilag.edu.ng.

Project Title: Intimacy as a Signifier of Abuse in the Selected Poetry of Al Alvarez and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo

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I am an African scholar affiliated to the university of Maroua located in northern Cameroon. I teach and do research on Fula language in its use in daily life, in literature and media. My current project within RecAf deals with theater for peace and development as it is produced in Fula (also known as Fulfulde or Pulaar) which is an African language of Atlantic branch widely spread out across the Sahelian belt and established in northern Cameroon and beyond as a medium of inter-ethnic communication. The theatrical pieces I investigate are written to be performed in public place and recorded, edited and reproduced in form of radio spots and shared as mp3 files in telephones to reach new circuits of African orality which adapts to the recent development of Information and Communication Technologies. My study is interested in these textual productions from the sociolinguistic, literary and communicative perspective by being part of the approach of communication for the development through language – a new interdisciplinary field that is increasingly becoming important in African studies.

Project Title: Theater for peace and development: interdisciplinary analysis of plays produced in Fulfulde in northern Cameroon

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Project Title: Nigerian Social Media Jokes: A Sociolinguistics Focus on the Praxis of Humour on National Discourses

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Project Title: The implementation of a language policy for multilingual education: extending the teaching and learning of isiXhosa for communicative purposes in teacher education

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Project Title: Culture, Ideology and Identity in Translated Postcolonial Literature

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I am a Swahili lecturer in the European Master of Interdisciplinary African Studies Program at the University of Bayreuth. I also conduct research in German-East African (Post)-colonial literature and transnational studies.

Project Title: German and Swahili Colonial Newspapers in German East Africa 1885-1918 as multimodal sites of emergence of social knowledge

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Project Titel: Linguistic Biographies – (Meta-)Knowledge Practices With Multiple Insights

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Berenike Eichhorn is currently a master student and graduate assistant at the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig. She studied anthropology in her bachelor in Leipzig and has a research focus on East African and Swahili Studies, as well as posthumanism and urban studies. She is responsible for the coordination of fellowships and the reading group, the organisation of the Grant Application Workshops and co-produces the RecAf podcast series Afrikanists Assemble.

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Mr. Mumbo, Collins Kenga, lecturer of Swahili Literature and African Theatre in the department of Kiswahili and Other African languages at Moi University, Eldoret Kenya . I hold an M. Phil and B.Ed (Arts) degrees from Moi University, Kenya. I have taught both masters and undergraduate students at Moi University’s department of Kiswahili and other African Languages. Courses handled at Master’s level include: African Contemporary Drama, African Contemporary Folklore and Swahili Written Poetry. I have supervised five masters desertations to completion and authored a couple of books among them a Kiswahili Play Kosa si Kosa published by Oxford University Press, Kenya 2009. Currently I am writing my doctoral thesis on Pan Aficanism.

Project Title: Consceintization Of The African In The Context Of African Integration As Depicted In Kiswahili Litarature

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Project Title: Imaginaries of Oceanic Histories in Oral and Written Texts from the Kenyan Coast
Associate member in "Oceanic Humanities for the Global South"

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Project Title: Are Colonial Languages Decolonising The (South) African University?

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Project Title: Circulation of African Texts in China: Translation, Publication and Knowledge Production

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Project Title: Mapping a newly emerging field of African language literature

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This research explores the traces of indigenous knowledges in the oral and literary works from Northern Nigeria. Some of these knowledges are branded animist by the region’s dominant ideologies of Islam and Westernisation. However, today, animism is understood as "the practice of continually re-enchanting the world as a manifestation of the animist unconscious in order to move the argument away from the charge of essentialism, which is likely to arise if this were seen as the natural, immutable, collective instinct of a people,” (Garuba 266). The present study looks at the heterogeneous nature of indigenous knowledges in the oral tropes, poetry and the novel by both men and women in Northern Nigeria. It studies these works as storehouse of those ideas that demonstrate evidence of indigenous philosophical truths, indigenous belief systems, knowledges, and practices that have been so prevalent in people’s experiences and that manifest in oral and literary representations.

Project Title: Indigenous Knowledges in the Oral and Literary Practices in Northern Nigeria

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I am currently completing my PhD thesis at the University of Bayreuth on "Fuji Music and Everyday Life in the Contemporary Yoruba Urban Space”. I am mapping the variegated experiences of Fuji in the contemporary urban Yoruba space. The research explores Fuji’s history, components and transformation, and its formation of and connections to communities (the Yoruba Muslim community is prominent in this context but there are other overlapping communities).

Bearing in mind the need for a shift of perspective and interrogation by incorporating an indigenous lens of researching Africa studies, I want to find new ways of bringing underrepresented perspectives and knowledge onboard to articulate visions of social development in Africa from the “ground-up” (Simone 2004; Mbembe and Nutall 2008). The proposed project will adopt decolonial research methods which allow for self-reflection and engagement with contextual imaginaries. I am interested in the nuances of everyday life and the indigenous knowledge that articulate visions of social development in Africa. I envisage the project to bring to bear relatable, practical, and solution-oriented findings.

Project Title: Popular Arts and the (Re)Imagination of Social Development in Africa