Fellows
Our Current Fellows
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Magugu Vincent Njeru
University of Moi,Kenya
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Project Titel: Culture, Ideology and Identity in Translated Postcolonial Literature
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Judith Mgbemena
University of Wukari,Nigeria
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Project Titel: Nigerian Social Media Jokes: A Sociolinguistics Focus on the Praxis of Humour on National Discourses
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Simthembile Xeketwana
Univerity of Stellenbosh,South Africa
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Project Titel: 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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Godwin Aondofa Ikyer
University of Moi,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 Titel: 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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Maryline Chepngetich Kirui
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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About:
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 Titel: The Trauma of Marginalization and Testimony of Trauma in Political and Genocide Fiction.
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Tajudeen Abodunrin Osunniran
University of Naples "L´Orientale",Italy
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About:
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 Titel: Social Satire and Humour in Covid-19 Media Cartoons in Côte d’Ivoire: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis
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Olusola Ogunbayo
University of Wukari,Nigeria
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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 Titel: Intimacy as a Signifier of Abuse in the Selected Poetry of Al Alvarez and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo
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Jean Pierre Boutche
University of Naples "L´Orientale",Italy
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About:
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 Titel: Theater for peace and development: interdisciplinary analysis of plays produced in Fulfulde in northern Cameroon
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Past Fellows and Associates
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Dyoniz Kindata
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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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 Titel: German and Swahili Colonial Newspapers in German East Africa 1885-1918 as multimodal sites of emergence of social knowledge
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Andrea Hollington
University of Cologne,Germany
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Project Titel: Linguistic Biographies – (Meta-)Knowledge Practices With Multiple Insights
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Berenike Eichhorn
University of Leipzig,Germany
Project Coordinator
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About:
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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Collins Mumbo
University of Moi,Kenya
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About:
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 Titel: Consceintization Of The African In The Context Of African Integration As Depicted In Kiswahili Litarature
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Jauquelyne Kosgei
Univerity of Stellenbosh,South Africa
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About:
Project Titel: Imaginaries of Oceanic Histories in Oral and Written Texts from the Kenyan Coast
Associate member in "Oceanic Humanities for the Global South"Contact:
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Lara-Stephanie Krause
University of Leipzig,Germany
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Project Titel: Are Colonial Languages Decolonising The (South) African University?
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Mingqing Yuan
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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Project Titel: Circulation of African Texts in China: Translation, Publication and Knowledge Production
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Nikitta Adjirakor
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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Project Titel: Mapping a newly emerging field of African language literature
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Dikko Muhammad
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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About:
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 Titel: Indigenous Knowledges in the Oral and Literary Practices in Northern Nigeria
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Oladapo O Ajayi
University of Bayreuth,Germany
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About:
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 Titel: Popular Arts and the (Re)Imagination of Social Development in Africa
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