Participants in the Addis 2019 Workshop “Africa as Concept and Method: Emancipation, Decolonization, Freedom” have been selected from an impressive and competitive pool of 400 applicants from across the African Continent. Originating from 11 African countries, the 35 early-career scholars selected reflect this geographical range but also the diversity of fields and research projects represented in the applications.

Henry Obi Ajumeze

Henry Obi Ajumeze

University of Cape Town
South Africa
Field of Study: Environmental Humanities/Drama
Title of Research: The Bio-Politics of Violence in the Drama of the Niger Delta

Henry Obi Ajumeze recently completed a PhD in the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Calabar, Nigeria, and an MPhil from the University of Ghana, Legon -- both of which are obtained in Theatre Arts. His PhD puts transdisciplinary posthumanist theory to work by exploring ways in which the creeks and rivers as well as the nonhuman species in the coastal region of Nigeria's Niger Delta are inscribed in the violent resistance to eco/environmental pollution by Big Oil Corporations and how these affordances are imagined and represented in modern Nigerian drama. He has a particular interest in environmental/energy humanities and uses his background in theatre to interrogate notions of heroism and agency beyond human exclusivity. His work was awarded the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Award in 2016. He is also a three-time recipient of SSRC Next-Gen Fellowship. His scholarly work has been published in Ofo Journal of Transatlantic Journal, Anthropos, South African Theatre Journal among others. He has contributed chapters to edited volumes most recent of which is Re-Thinking Environment: Literature, Ethics and Praxis (Authorspress, 2017). He writes poetry, with one acclaimed collection, Dimples in the Sand (2009), and has featured poems in several anthologies and journals.

Getnet Tibebu Alemayehu

Getnet Tibebu Alemayehu

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: Resistance and Representation in Selected Anglophone African Novels

I am Getnet Tibebu, from Ethiopia, and a PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University. I have participated in conducting research and sharing knowledge with my students. I am a disciplined and honest person. As a lecturer, I have one year experience in Mizan-Tepi University. Currently, I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Addis Ababa University. My future dream is to be an excellent researcher and best teacher in English languages and literature. I have great desire to continue my education since it is a key to success. Learning literature is a tool which serves as a mirror to see one another's cultural, political, economic, social, etc, aspects. Moreover, it is an interdisciplinary stream. Thus, this motivates me a lot. Through education, I will strongly work to decolonize the mind (bring freedom of thought) for African people in particular and for the world in general. Learning in general is a road map which leads us to the bright corner of the world. For this reason, I am highly motivated to get better education.

Mihret Kebede Alwabie

Mihret Kebede Alwabie

Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
Austria / Ethiopia
Field of Study: Arts
Title of Research: Conversing with Silence

Mihret Kebede is an artist/poet, who graduated from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design in painting with distinction in 2007 and has earned her MA in arts from the same school in 2016. She has received a certificate award of recognition as the best practicing artist in 2013 from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Ethiopia. Mihret Kebede has participated in several local and international art exhibitions, workshops, poetry performances, art residencies, and collaborative art projects. Beyond her artistic practices she is also well known for organizing local and international artistic events and festivals. Among her numerous involvements in organizing artistic events, Mihret is a co-organizer and founding member of Addis video art festival together with the initiator of the festival Ezra Wube, a founding Manager of a popular monthly poetry and jazz event, and a founding director of Netsa Art Village, Artists collective. She also did several collaborative poetry and jazz projects and performances including workshops and seminars with Studio Olafur Eliasson, followed by her show in the studio in 2012. She is currently a PhD in-practice program candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with a working title conversing with Silence as a continuity of her project Silence during her MA study at Alle school of fine arts and Design, Addis Ababa University.

Christelle Amina Djouldé

Christelle Amina Djouldé

University of Ngaoundéré
Cameroon
Field of Study: History
Title of Research: The Visual Colonial Library: Africa in Western Cartoon from Colonial Moment to the Post Cold War Period (1917-2015)

Dr. Amina Djouldé Christelle is senior lecturer at the Department of History of the Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences of the University of Ngaoundéré-Cameroon. Her research interests focus on political cartoons, African politics, visual studies, and African endogenous knowledge. Her 2017 thesis was titled “Cartoons and Politics in Post-Colonial Cameroon (1960-2012).” It examines the use of humorous cartoon sources in scrutinizing the politics of post-colonial Cameroon. She is also interested in the study of gender-related imageries and the representation of women. Through her research activities on visuals studies, Amina Djouldé is creating a new approach to writing history through images. In this vein, and in furtherance of her academics activities, she has attended conferences, trainings, and workshops in several countries. She has also published several papers and contributed to book writing that focus on politics, visual studies, history, and diplomacy. She is also a member of the editorial board of the African Humanities. Journal of Social Sciences. Her forthcoming publication is « Satirical cyber-picturality and transcription of western imagination on sub-saharan Africa: colonialist persistence in post-independence era”, in J-B Ouedraogo and Mamadou Diawara (eds), Translation revisited: contesting the sense of African realities, (Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
As the Coordinator of the Community Research and Development Center (COREDEC), she organizes workshops and interacts with local and international students. She is also academic advisor at School for International Training (SIT-US) Study Abroad-Cameroon / COREDEC. Amina Djouldé is a recipient of a number of academic grants and fellowship which included: African Peacebuilding Network (APN), Hampâté Ba Fellowship from Maison des Sciences de L’Homme (MSH)-Ange Guépin de Nantes-France, grants for researcher on cartoon from International Center of Caricature, Cartoon press and Humor of Saint-Just-Le Martel (France), also, thesis writing from Community Research and Development Center (COREDEC), and Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and Special Award for Female Excellence in Higher Education in Cameroon.

Mohamed Bakhit

Mohamed Bakhit

University of Khartoum
Sudan
Field of Study: Anthropology
Title of Research: Identity, Nationality and Citizenship for Southern Sudanese Communities in Khartoum

I am Mohamed A. G. Bakhit. I have a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. I have been Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, University of Khartoum, from August 2016 to the present. Currently, I am the Head of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Faculty of Economic & Social Studies, University of Khartoum since February 2017. My main research interests are migration, urbanization, environment, minority groups, and citizenship.

Yohannes Asfaw Beyene

Yohannes Asfaw Beyene

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: Literature
Title of Research: Nature Mysticism: Redemptive and Revelatory Functions

My name is Yohannes Asfaw Beyene. I was born in Mekelle, Ethiopia on Sep. 11,1978 G. C. I earned my BED in English from Dilla University in 2000 G.C.; MA in Literature in English from A.A.U in 2005; and PhD in Literature in English from A.A.U in 2014 G.C.

My MA thesis is entitled “Images of Darkness in Selected English Poems”. In this study, I argued and tried to demonstrate the positive valuations darkness can have, in stark contrast to popular assumptions, both as a symbol and as a physical phenomenon. In my dissertation I took up the question of universal human predicament. I attempted to explore the subject of human suffering from a mystical perspective. I adopted an eclectic approach for this research drawing varied insights from the philosophical implications of quantum physics, phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis and the mystical traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Sufism. In this research I attempted to develop the argument that suffering is not inherent to existence but an undesirable byproduct of our predominantly sensory and rational modes of consciousness to the exclusion of intuitive awareness. Consequently, I argued that nurturing our intuitive powers can help us gain unitive consciousness that will remedy our perceptual malady.

Perhaps going a bit further out of my major area of interest, I have also conducted a medium scale joint research on the value of media in addressing issues of the Five Year Growth and Transformation Plan of Ethiopia (2011-2015) (with a focus on Media outlets operating in Tigrai region).

I am currently conducting a research on Nature Mysticism in Tigrinya poetry. I have been working as a lecturer in a private college (Nile College) from July 2001- 2003 and in MekelleUuniverstty from 2005- onwards. In my leisure time I like to spend time in my garden at home or out in the wilderness tuning in to the quiet insights and healing whispers of nature and writing poetry that emerges out of these experiences.

Andualem Tolessa Bobe

Andualem Tolessa Bobe

I'm Andualem Tolessa. I was born and grew up in Asossa, western Ethiopia. I'm 35 and married, and a father of a wonder-kid as well. I'm an Ethiopian and a lecturer of English Literature at Haramaya University, eastern Ethiopian. I am currently pursuing my PhD study at Addis Ababa University. As I defended my proposal last year, I’m working on the actual Dissertation. My area of study in general is African literature: "Generations and power relations as reflected in selected contemporary Amharic Novels."

B Camminga

B Camminga

University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
Field of Study: Sociology
Title of Research: Migrating Privacy Rights: African Transgender Refugees in Northern Mediascapes, and Digital Diasporic Voices

B Camminga (*they/them) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of Wits, South Africa. Their work considers the interrelationship between the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North and the physical embodied journeying of African transgender asylum seekers globally. Their research interests include: transgender rights, migration, asylum and diasporas; notions of privacy and the bureaucratisation of sex/gender; and the history of ‘trans phenomena’ in South Africa and Africa more broadly. In 2018 they were runner up in the Africa Spectrum: Young African Scholars Award, which honours outstanding research by up-and-coming African scholars, for their article ‘“Gender Refugees” in South Africa – The “Common Sense” Paradox’. Africa Spectrum 53 (1): 89–112. Their book Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies over Borders and Borders over Bodies will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.

Rosemary Chikafa-Chipiro

Rosemary Chikafa-Chipiro

University of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Field of Study: English
Title of Research: Representations of Black Womanhood in Tyler Perry's and Ousmane Sembene's Films

I have been teaching at the University of Zimbabwe since 2010. I teach courses in English and Media studies. I completed my PhD in English - with specialisations in Gender and African and Diaspora cinema. In addition to the PhD, I also hold a BA (Hons) in English and an MA in English from the University of Zimbabwe. I have also undertaken courses in Media studies from the University of Oslo International Summer School and the LSE-UCT July School. My research interests are in gender studies, African feminist theories, African and Diaspora studies - including literature and the media. I am in the process of finding different platforms for my research and I hope to start on a solid postdoctoral project that is closely aligned to my doctoral research.

Mekwanent Tilahun Desta

Mekwanent Tilahun Desta

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: Identity Construction in Postcolonial Anglophone African and Caribbean Novels

Mekwanent Tilahun Desta is currently a PhD student at Addis Ababa University. His research interest generally includes African and Ethiopian Studies. Specifically, he concerns himself with relevant thematic areas such as Identity Construction, Resistance and Representation, African folklore, African languages and culture, African popular culture and musical performance, comparative study of African praise poetry, oral traditions, comparative study of myth of creation, indigenous conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms, culture and development, multicultural and multilingual education in Ethiopia, Ethiopian literature, and Comparative study of Afan Oromo, Amharic and Tigrigna Literature.

Duguma Erasu

Duguma Erasu

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: Geography and Environmental Studies
Title of Research: Urban Expansion and Peri-Urban Transformations in Ethiopia, the Case of Addis Ababa City and its Peri-Urban Areas<

My name is Duguma Erasu Tufa. I was born in Arsi Zone Seru Wereda Dharro Nageya farmers’ kebele on April 30, 1987 G.C. I completed primary school at Seru Primary School and I completed Secondary and preparatory School at Jara Secondary School (Bale Zone Gololcha Wereda, Oromia region) and Robe Didea Secondary and Preparatory School (Arsi Zone Robe Wereda, Oromia region) after that.
I earned my BeD degree in Geography and environmental studies from Arba Minch university in 2009 G.C. Principal subjects/occupational skills and knowledge covered in Geography and Environmental Studies includes three types of geographic knowledge. The First one includes Physical parts such as land forms, climate conditions, Biodiversity, biogeography, and soil geography. The second parts include human geography, which includes the interaction between human and its environments, economic activities, cultural geography, urban and regional planning, and environment and development. The last one is technical parts such as cartography, GIS and remote sensing. I had studied my MA degree in Addis Ababa University and graduated in master of art in Urban and Regional Development Planning July, 2011. The principal skill and knowledge covered includes research methodology, thought and philosophy in geography, application of remote sensing in geography and environmental studies, urban and regional Economy, topics in urban management and theories and techniques in regional planning.
From August, 2011 to January, 2014, I was working in Bule hora University. I was working as lecturer of Department Geography and Environmental studies as well as head of Department of Geography and Environmental studies. The main activities and responsibilities were lecturing and teaching, assessing and evaluating courses, preparing different teaching materials, advising students on academic as well as non-academic issues, supervision of students on teaching learning based training programme in different fields. From January 2014 to October 2016, I was working as lecturer and served as the Head of the Department of Geography and Environmental studies in Madda Walabu University. In madda walabu Univeristy, I conducted two research studies and published three articles, and I have two fully-fledged manuscripts which will be published in near future.
Since October, 2016, I have been studying my PhD degree in Urban and regional development planning at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. My PhD dissertation title is Analyzing Urban expansion and per-urban spatial transformation in Addis Ababa city and its peri-urban areas. My broad areas of research interest include: Urban and regional issues, waste management, urban spatial interaction, regional economies, urban remore sensing, climate change and vulnerabilities.
My article includes
1. Duguma Erasu, Tesfaye Feye, Amaha Kiros & Abel Balew (2018): Municipal solid waste generation and disposal in Robe town, Ethiopia, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, DOI: 10.1080/10962247.2018.1467351
2. Dereje D, Gemeda B, Henok W and Duguma E. (2016) Analyzing farmers’s awareness to Climate change and trends of Climate change in Bale Zone of Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia: African Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology: 4 (9), 818-823, 2016.
3. Duguma Erasu (2017) Remote Sensing-Based Urban Land Use/Land Cover Change Detection and Monitoring. Journal of Remote Sensing and GIS 6(2),2017

Endalkachew Hailu Guluma

Endalkachew Hailu Guluma

Arba Minch University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: Literature
Title of Research: A Deconstructive Reading of Ideology in Selected Post-1991 Amharic and Afaan Oromo Novels

I completed high school in Bethel Evangelical Secondary School, Dembi Dollo, Western Ethiopia in June, 2000. I then joined the department of Foreign/English/ Language and Literature in Debub/Hawasa/ University and graduated with a BA in Foreign/English/ Language and Literature in July 2005. For my BA thesis I studied the English Poems of Biruk Gebre Medhin. The title of my thesis is “A Thematic Appraisal of Biruk Gebre Medhin’s 'My Seal'” and in it I critically analyzed his poems’ themes using post-colonial literary theory. As an MA student in Addis Ababa University between 2006 and 2008, I have done various studies like “The Psychodynamics of Plot in Somerset Maugham’s short Story 'A string of Beads'”, “Colonialism as a Boomerang in Mongo Beti’s 'The Poor Christ of Bomba'”, “A stylistic analysis of irony in Gemoraw’s poem 'Oh Robot'”, and others. My MA thesis entitled “The Predicament of the Diaspora: as Reflected in 'The Texture of Dreams' and 'The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears'” was published as a manuscript by LAP Lambert Publishers. It is where my interest in Diaspora literature, post colonialism, and post-structuralism got even stronger. As a lecturer in Arba Minch University I did “a comparative study of Modernization and the Modern Intelligentsia as Reflected in Be’alu Girma’s “käʾadəmasə bašagärə” and Wole Soyinka’s “The Interpreters”” which is published in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual Research Symposium of the University. This study revealed to me that post-structuralism and deconstruction are effective for a richer and more critical reading of African novels, especially novels that deal with African/Ethiopian elites. Thus, for my PhD which I completed in June 2017 in Addis Ababa University, I did a comparative study of Amharic and Afaan Oromo novels using post structuralism, especially deconstruction. In this study, I tried to deconstruct the ideologies behind the overt ideological projects of the novels. I showed in the study how ethno nationalist culturalism and liberal Ethiopian nationalism are deeply intertwined and are continually deconstructing and debasing each other. Due to the space limitations of PhD dissertations, I was able to deal only with two pairs of novels that partly covered two regimes. So I am now doing a full- fledged book project which is an extension of this PhD but with more depth and breadth. The book would have three core chapters: “Ideology and Remembering the Past”, “Ideology and Making Sense of the Present”, and “Ideology and Envisioning a Future”. Currently I am engaged in a critical reading of two futuristic Amharic and Afaan Oromo novels as part of the third chapter of this project. I am doing this in Arba Minch University while teaching English language and literature courses. I am also preparing an MA in Literature curriculum which is going to be launched next year. In addition, I am currently engaged in a study entitled “Folklore and Environmental Conservation among the Aari of Southern Ethiopia: An Ecocritical Study of Aari Proverbs and Myths”. Furthermore, I am presently serving as a language editor of Arba Minch University’s newly launched journal “Ethiopian Journal of Business and Social Sciences”.

Kim Gurney

Kim Gurney

University of Western Cape
South Africa
Field of Study: Contemporary Art, Cultural Geography, Urban Studies
Title of Research: Platform

Kim Gurney is a writer, artist and researcher based in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a Next Generation Researcher position in the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at University of the Western Cape, and a Research Associate affiliation in the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at University of Cape Town. Two recent books that traverse contemporary art, urbanism and public interest issues through narrative experimentation exemplify her curiosities: The art of public space: Curating and re-imagining the ephemeral city (2015) and August House is dead, Long live August House! The story of a Johannesburg atelier (2017). Kim’s current projects are Platform, which investigates independent art spaces in selected African cities (ACC), and Green Screen, which follows the work of artisans in a Cape Town industrial area (CHR). Her own art practice responds to disappearances of different sorts and makes restorative gestures. She also engages other artists through curatorial projects and a nomadic platform, guerilla gallery (b.2012), that makes occasional interventions in offspaces.

Serah Kasembeli

Serah Kasembeli

Stellenbosch University
Kenya
Field of Study: English Studies
Title of Research: The Ghost of Memory: Literary Representations of Slavery in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Serah Namulisa Kasembeli has a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University. She is interested in Indian Ocean Studies, Indian Ocean slavery, historical erasure and invisibility. Her current research focuses on the haunting trope resultant from repressed slave historical pasts. She reads the concepts of the archive, memory, trauma, haunting and spectrality in post-apartheid literature. She is the founder of The Dr Kasembeli Lab- an academic writing consultancy which offers consultancy, critical feedback and editing on academic writing. Dr Kasembeli is from Kenya and is keen to understand institutionalized violence and oppression. Her current research is a monograph on Indian Ocean slave history and memory, a journal article project on Modern-Day Slavery, and a paper on South African Student Protest Movement that examines the state of knowledge production in University of the 21st century. She recently completed an Andrew Mellon fellowship at Northwestern University, Evanston, received The British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) Thematic Grant for a research in Indian Ocean slavery in the Kenyan Littoral and published an article: “ Of Oceanic Crossings and Discordant Cultural Adaptations in Post-apartheid Neo-slave Narration” - https://doi.org/10.1080/232774... .

Douglas Kaze

Douglas Kaze

University of Jos
Nigeria
Field of Study: Literature
Title of Research: The Environmental Imagination in Arthur Nortje's Poetry

Douglas E. Kaze works as a lecturer in the Department of English of the University of Jos, Nigeria, where he teaches African Literature and Creative Writing. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the same institution. From 2014 to 2016, Kaze spent time at Rhodes University, South Africa, as a doctoral student working in the area of environmental humanities. His thesis, The Environmental Imagination in Arthur Nortje’s Poetry, delves into the figurations of the environment in intersection with apartheid and psychic-platial exile in the poetry of one of South Africa’s under-studied apartheid-period poets, Arthur Nortje. Kaze has published a few articles in the areas of postcolonial and environmental literature. He has also had the privilege to present papers at conferences such as those organised by the African Literature Association (ALA) and the Association of African Studies of the UK (ASAUK). Recently, he participated in the ASAUK conference as the organiser of the thematic stream “The Environment in African Literature, Film, Music and Art.” He plans to devote more research time on the treatment of the environment in apartheid-era protest poetry. He is also a singer-songwriter and a creative writer.

Pauline Kazembe

Pauline Kazembe

University of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Field of Study: Literature and Gender
Title of Research: Emerging Zimbabwean Female Identities in Selected Post-2000 Works by Female Writers and Musicians

Pauline Kazembe (also known as Pauline Mateveke), is a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, Department of English and Media studies. She joined the Department as an undergraduate student in 2001 and became a lecturer in 2010. Pauline holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the field of Gender and Literature. Her research interests include popular culture and literature, gender studies and literary criticism.

Charles Kebaya

Charles Kebaya

South Eastern Kenya University
Kenya
Field of Study: Television Drama Criticism
Title of Research: Invention and (Re)configuration of Space in Selected Kenyan Television Dramas

Charles Kebaya holds a PhD in Television Drama Criticism from Kenyatta University, Kenya. He has authored a number articles in referred journals such “Popular Art and the Reconfiguration of Police Atrocities in Kenya” (2018), “The Criminalization of Youth in Popular Art in Kenya”(2018), “Inventing Women: Female Voice in Kenyan Television Drama”(2017), “Historicizing Kenyan Comedy” (2015); Co-authored a number of articles such as “Popular Music and Identity formation among Kenyan Youth (2016) and “Community Theatre and Development Practices in the Nyanza region of Kenya” (2015); Co-edited a number of books such as Language and Translation: Theory, Pedagogy and Practice (2016) and African Drama and Theatre: A Criticism (2012). His book, Federico Garcia Lorca’s Subversive Theatre: A Case of Blood Wedding and Yerma was published in 2011. He is also the executive producer of a documentary film, Drugnets (2015). His research interests are in the areas of Television Drama, Dramatic Criticism, Popular Culture and Cultural studies.

Valmont Layne

Valmont Layne

University of Western Cape
South Africa
Field of Study: History, Humanities
Title of Research: Goema's Refrain: Auditioning Vernacular Musicking and Post-Apartheid Desire

Valmont Layne is currently a National Research Foundation Early Career Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He previously completed a Master’s Degree at the University of Cape Town in 2005, focusing on jazz, social dance and vernacular music of that country.
As a practitioner, he spent ten years at the District Six Museum in Cape Town – an innovative community museum dedicated to land restitution and social justice in the city. Here, he established the audio-visual Research Archives and its collections of music and oral histories – focussing on the music and culture of District Six and the inner city. He curated and performed with a number of projects relating to the music and cultural life of District Six before becoming Director in 2005. As Director, Layne participated in a range of international museum, heritage and human rights programmes such as the Swedish African Museum Programme, the International Association for Sound and Audiovisual Archives, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience where he served on its International Board.
He has, in recent years, been part of the team at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival - one of South Africa’s premier multidisciplinary arts festivals, and was also Secretary General of Arterial Network, a network of African artists dedicated to the creative sector. Here, he coordinated cultural policy advocacy, research, and monitoring freedom of creative expression, and cultural planning initiatives for its South African Chapter.
His PhD research reads regional musicking as affective spaces, auditing ‘jazzing’ and folk/ vernacular lifeworlds in terms which amplify the sonic, the postcolonial and the global.
He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

Chika Mba

Chika Mba

University of Ghana, Legon
Nigeria
Field of Study: Philosophy/African Studies
Title of Research: Is Afropolitanism a Colonial Mentality? Frantz Fanon and the Challenges of Conceiving Africa-centred Futures

Chika C. Mba is a Nigerian philosopher, currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. Chika’s main research interests are in the areas of African Philosophy, Global Justice, Frantz Fanon and Postcolonialism. He completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, between August 2015 and July 2017. He is the recipient of several other international academic awards including the 2012 African Humanities Programme (AHP) awarded by the American council of learned Societies (ACLS) and the 2013 Small Grants for Thesis Writing (PhD), awarded by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). His most recent publication is entitled ‘Conceiving Global Culture: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identity’ published by Acta Academica in August 2018. He is currently completing a monograph on the title Frantz Fanon: Decolonising the Discourse on Global Justice.

Philomina Mintah

Philomina Mintah

University of Ghana, Legon
Ghana
Field of Study: Literature in English
Title of Research: Silence in the Ghanaian Novel on Slavery: a Study of Armah, Herbstein, and Azasu

I am a lecturer at Central University, Ghana and have been lecturing undergraduate students for over six years in the English Department. The courses I teach are African literature, American literature, English Literature (poetry, play, and novel) from 15th Century to 20th Century, English language and Writing Skills, and English Proficiency to Francophone Students from West African Countries – Togo, Benin, Niger and Cote D'Ivoire. I have also taught English Proficiency to Spanish and Portuguese speaking Expatriates from Brazil, Spain, Chile, Bolivia and Portugal. I am a member of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), African Literature Association (ALA), International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD) and Women in Tertiary Education (WITE). My research interests are in African literature with a focus on slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism; American and Diaspora literature, Gender and Feminist studies. I have published one academic essay on “Images of Women in Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons: A Thematic Study” in Revue Ivoirienne de Langues Entrageres. Vol. 11, which can be retrieved from: http://rile-ci.net/numero11/06%20Philomina.pdf. My second paper, “Akan Proverbs and the Social Construction of Gender” is underway.
I am currently pursuing my Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Ghana and I am in my fourth year. My Ph.D. thesis is “Silence and the Tran-Atlantic Slave Trade: a Study of the Ghanaian novel on slavery”. I hope to contribute to the discourse about the silence on slavery in Africa with information on what can be learnt from the Ghanaian novel on slavery.

Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

Center for African Popular Culture Studies - Ashesi University College
Ghana
Field of Study: African Visual Culture
Title of Research: Ghanaian Market Literature & Negative Beliefs about Women in Intimate Relationships

Dr. Oduro-Frimpong is with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Director of the newly established Center for African Popular Cultureat Ashesi University. His research broadly focuses on African popular media genres. His recent publications on Ghanaian political cartoons appear in the edited volumes: Taking African Cartoons Seriously: Politics, Satire, and Culture (2018), and Global Dialectics in Intercultural Communication (2018). He has curated a number of exhibitions on Ghanaian political cartoons, hand-painted movie posters, felabration posters, Ghanaian Highlife music album covers, and Ghanaian barbershop signs. His 2018 curations include: a focus on the satirical works of works of Michael Soi (Kenya) and Bright Ackwerh (Ghana); portrait paintings of Ebony Reigns, the late female Ghanaian musician; and a pop-up exhibition on book cover paintings of significant works in African popular culture at the African Studies conference in the United Kingdom (ASAUK).

Kwame Osei-Poku

Kwame Osei-Poku

University of Ghana, Legon
Ghana
Field of Study: Literature
Research project: Ideology and Identity in Selected Travelogues by Africans in The West African Review Magazine of the Colonial Era

Kwame Osei-Poku is a Lecturer at the Department of English (School of Languages) at the University of Ghana, Legon. He has recently submitted his doctoral dissertation on African travel writing, which is breaking new ground in the emerging field of African-authored travel writing studies. The dissertation: Ideology and Identity in Selected African Authored Travelogues in The West African Review Magazine of the Pre-Independence Period, won a Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship award on the auspices of the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) for the 2017/2018 cohort of the African Humanities Program (AHP).
Having begun work as an Assistant Lecturer in 2011 at the University of Ghana, has been contributing to the academic community in Ghana by presenting papers at the Department of English, University of Ghana, Kwame has been invited to present papers at international conferences, including the African Travel Writing Encounters, University of Birmingham in March 2016, and the Kofi Anyidoho Symposium, December 2017.
Kwame is currently working on a Mellon funded project on Multilingualism, where he and other colleagues from his department are looking for remnants of European early contact language influences in the various coastal local languages of Ghana, as well as the cultural and historical narratives that circumscribe the usage of such linguistic lexical items in these coastal areas.
Kwame hopes that in the next seven to eight years his research would culminate into the professorial status, the highest position in academia. In the meantime, he is working tirelessly to publish his research and eventually work on a book that will focus on African authored travel writing from the 17th century to the early 20th century.

Adewale Owoseni

Adewale Owoseni

University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Nigeria
Field of Study: African Philosophy
Title of Research: An Epistemic Constructivist Analysis of Human and Animal Relations (HAR) in Yoruba Thought

Adewale O. Owoseni is currently an Assistant Lecturer and a Doctoral student at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interests include, African philosophy, Environmental Ethics and Epistemology. He is a recipient of the Bergen Summer Research School Grant, Norway (BSRS 2016), CAS University of Basel Summer School (BSS 2017) Research Grant, Switzerland as well as University of Leiden Institute for Business Ethics (St. Gallen in conjunction with UCAC Cameroun) Seminar Series Grant (2018). He has published some articles in reputable journals on Yoruba notion of animals and some thematic issues in African philosophy and development.

Jaouad Radouani

Jaouad Radouani

Mohamed 1st University, Morocco
Morocco
Field of Study: Humanities and Area Studies
Title of Research: Morocco in British Restoration Drama

Jaouad Radouani is a Moroccan professor affiliated to Mohamed 1st University, The Faculty of Humanities. He has been a faculty member since 2016 and served as head of the department of English Language and Literature the last season. He completed his Ph.D in Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Dher El Mehrez, Fez, and his undergraduate studies at Mohamed 1st University. He is a member of the faculty’s doctoral school’s research laboratory: « Communication, Culture, and Translation » and his research interests lie in the area of Culture, Identity, Environmental Studies, and Colonial/Postcolonial Discourse Analysis. Radouani served as an administrator and convened, co-convened, and organised a number of national and international conferences and academic events. He is the instructor of Literature and the Environment, Colonial & Postcolonial Discourse Analysis, and Literary Theory in undergraduate and postgraduate studies. He is also author of two books: Sterotype and Prejudice in Elizabethan Drama & Poems from the Moroccan Desert, and translated, from English into Arabic, a book by Richard C. Pennel entitled: A Country with a Government and a Flag: The Rif War in Morocco 1921-1926. Prof. Radouani wrote, translated, and published articles and research papers on culture, identity, politics, performance arts, and the environmental humanities.

Biruk Shewadeg

Biruk Shewadeg

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Filed of Study: African Studies
Title of Research: Towards an Afrocentric Epistemology: An Emancipatory Discourse

Biruk Shewadeg holds a BA degree in Philosophy and an MA degree in African Studies from Addis Ababa University (earned in 2011 and 2013 respectively). His areas of interest include issues in African Philosophy as well as Socio-political and cultural issues in the Horn of Africa, particularly Somalia. Currently, he is a lecturer of philosophy at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University. Recent publications include a chapter entitled "Political Islam in the Horn of Africa: the Somalia Experience" in Abdul Shakil's edited volume Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (Universal Publishers, 2017) and two articles in The Teacher entitled "Assessing Negritude: Senghor in Focus" (May 2017) and "Globalization, Growth, and Poverty alleviation Nexus" (June 2018).

Pfunzo Sidogi

Pfunzo Sidogi

Stellenbosch University

Tshwane University of Technology

South Africa
Field of Study: Visual Arts/Art History
Title of Research: Unsettling Segregation: The Representation of Urbanization in Black Artists’ Work from the 1920s to the 1990s

Pfunzo Sidogi is a lecturer in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), South Africa. He holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art (cum laude) from TUT and is a doctoral candidate at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His PhD research project examines the artistic representations of twentieth century urbanization in South Africa by Black artists and is supported by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), in collaboration with the South African Humanities Deans Association. He has published on themes related to art education, South African art, and comics. He is a founding member of Ithuteng Art, a non-profit organization that promotes quality arts education in select public schools within the City of Tshwane (formally Pretoria) metropole. He is chair of the de arte journal -- jointly published by Taylor & Francis and UNISA Press -- editorial committee, and also serves as a member of the Pretoria Arts Association board and the South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH) council.

Eileen Manka Tabuwe Akwo

Eileen Manka Tabuwe Akwo

University of Buea
Cameroon
Field of Study: Journalism and Mass Communication
Title of Research: Media Narratives and Conflict Construction in the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis: 1961 to Present

I am Eileen Manka Tabuwe Akwo, currently a teacher in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Buea and a doctoral student as well. From 2008 to present, I have been performing these dual functions within the department, first as a Masters student and now as a doctoral student. My areas of expertise have included Mass Communication Theory and Methodology, Intercultural Communication and Contemporary Publishing. I have also taught Women, Media and ICTs in the Department of Women and Gender Studies of the same university. My teaching career started as a response to a need within the department and has grown into something I love. My interaction with students and the constant push to broaden my knowledge in order to better serve them has refined me as a student. I begin to ask questions where I would expect them to. Scholarship has become interesting for me especially given the vast untapped landscape called Africa. I hope to continue to ask questions and sometimes provide the answers to other questions, not only in the classroom but in the field where the people are. The papers I have published so far reflect this quest. Some of my research has been on trying to identify the link between mass communication theory in line with the practical values of a developing nation; the nexus of conflict reporting in Cameroon – Boko Haram and CAR conflicts; engendering ICTs and Market women’s use of mobile phones. I am currently working on how the African press reports the stock exchange as part of an initiative to develop learning material for African students interested in economic journalism. However, my major research area for my terminal degree is based on Media narratives of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. Who, what, when, how and with what effect are the fundamental questions I hope to address. Answers to these questions may provide solutions to conflict prevention and management.

Lauren Van der Rede

Lauren Van der Rede

University of Western Cape
South Africa
Field of Study: Literature and Culture
Title of Research: The Post-Genocidal Condition: Ghosts of Genocide, Genocidal Violence and Representation

Lauren van der Rede is an Early Career Scholar at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Her research engages with the question of genocide and focuses on its expressions in three African contexts, namely, Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Darfur region of Sudan. Located at the intersection of genocide, psychoanalysis and literature, her doctoral intervention, from which a number of journal publications have developed, is concerned with genocide as concept. Titled The Post-Genocidal Condition: Ghosts of Genocide, Genocidal Violence, and Representation the intervention asks what it might mean to think genocide beyond the framework of the phenomenon.

Marciana Were

Marciana Were

Tom Mboya University College
Kenya
Field of Study: Life Narratives
Title of Research: “Re/Signing the Private Self”: Reading Methods and Modes of Personal and Collective Remembering the Self in the East African Woman’s Political Autobiography

Marciana Nafula Were is a Kenyan woman scholar and researcher. She is an Associate Researcher in the English Department, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and the Kenya Oral Literature Association (KOLA). She also teaches English/literary studies at the Tom Mboya University College, Kenya. Her research interests are in life narratives, oral literature, gender studies, and post-colonial studies. Her PhD research was on political autobiographies of African women politicians. Marciana also wrote the biography of Julia Auma Ojiambo, a Kenyan female politician as her MA research project. Although a teacher by profession, Marciana has worked with several NGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector. She also worked for KOLA under a UNDP-funded civic education program which appropriated theatre as a methodology for development. Currently, Marciana lives in Homa Bay, Kenya.

Tsegaberhan Wodaj

Tsegaberhan Wodaj

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: The Theme of Alienation as Reflected in Dinaw Mengestu's Three Novels

My name is Tsegaberhan Wodaj, and I am recently living in Arba Minch around my home university Arba Minch University. Professionally, since 2011, I am an English literature instructor at Arba Minch University, and before that I have taught English at elementary and high school for about ten years.
Starting from 2016, I have been striving for my PhD study at AAU in foreign literature at the Language Studies. My prior interest of research is African literature, and specifically I am conducting my PhD thesis on African Diasporic literature in relation with my enthusiasm. All I want others to know about myself is I am so eager to hear everything about literature when someone is narrating or speaking on literary subjects.

Mesfin Wodajo

Mesfin Wodajo

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: A Feminist Reading of Six Contemporary African Novels in English

My name is Mesfin Wodajo Woldemariam. I was born in 1986 in Kafa- Saylem, Ethiopia. I attended my elementary schools in Yinemeda and Saylem and secondary school at Masha, Sheka Ethiopia. I received Bachelor of Arts Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature (English) from Addis Ababa University on August 23, 2007 and Master of Arts degree in Literature from Bahir Dar University on March 12, 2012. Since, March 2009, I am an employee of Mizan-Tepi University in which I have been working as Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature. Before my study leave, I served the University in various administrative positions. Regarding research participation, I have conducted a number of researches such as: “Functions and Formal and Stylistic Features of Kafa Proverbs” which was published by Lambert Academic Publisher in Germany in 2012 as a book; “The Socio-cultural Functions of Kafa Proverbs” research article published on Journal of African Culture and History; The Socio-cultural Functions of Bench proverbs”; “An Investigation of Women Image in Sheka Folktale”; Identity Crisis, Ambivalence and Otherness in Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Novel Devil On The Cross (1982); A Feminist Reading of Gebeyehu Ayele’s Novel Escape (2011). The later four researches are finalized but not yet published. Besides, I participated as Production Manager, Camera Assistant and Researcher in the production of a documentary film entitled Light of the green valley which portrays the journey of Mizan-Tepi University since 2006. Currently, I am a third year PhD candidate in English Literature at Addis Ababa University. My dissertation is entitled as “A Feminist Reading of Contemporary African Novels in English: A Comparative Analysis”. I have successfully defended my proposal and started actual research work.

Hiwot Walelign Workneh

Hiwot Walelign Workneh

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: Magical Realism in Contemporary African Novel

I am Hiwot Walelign. I was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I had my bachelor degree in Foreign Languages and Literature. For my master’s thesis, I studied stream of consciousness in an Ethiopian novel. Now I am a third year PhD student, again in English Literature program. My focus now is postmodernism and African novels. I’ve developed an interest in African novels recently, though I read Things Fall Apart and Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in undergrad school. For my dissertation now, I am trying to incorporate novels from the different corners of Africa and explore postmodernist traits through them. So far I have defended my proposal and now I am at the stage where I read more novels and theories and prepare myself for the analysis part.

Liknaw Yirsaw Wubie

Liknaw Yirsaw Wubie

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: English Literature
Title of Research: Postmodern Features in Selected Ethiopian Novels in English

I have learned my BA degree in Bahir Dar University in teaching English Language and Literature from 2006 to 2009, and in 2011, I earned my MA degree in English Literature from Mekelle University. Then I taught in the department of English Language and Literature in Wolkite University for two years in 2012 and 2013. Plus, I have been teaching in Debre Markos university from 2014 onwards. Along with my teaching in English Language and Literature department in Debre Markos University, for I am a lecturer in the English Language and Literature Department of Debre Markos University. Currently, I am a PhD student in English Literature at Addis Ababa University. My PhD research is entitled, "Postmodern Features in Selected Ethiopian Novels in English". Apart, from my educational background, I am very much interested in discussions and doing research works in Literature and Linguistics cumulatively in culture.

Eugene Arnaud Yombo Sembe

Eugene Arnaud Yombo Sembe

University of Yaounde II
Cameroon
Field of Study: Political Philosophy
Title of Research: On the Way to Statehood Construction. Chinese Architecture and Cities Development in Luanda (Angola), Nairobi (Kenya), and Dakar (Senegal)

Eugene Arnaud Yombo Sembe obtained his PhD in Political Science at the University of Yaoundé II where he is now a lecturer and researcher at the Group of Researches in Administration, Politics and Society (GRAPS). He is also a policy analyst with the Governance and Democracy Initiative at the Nkafu Policy Institute (a Cameroonian think tank at the Denis and Lenora Foretia Foundation). He holds a Masters in political science (University of Yaounde II) and another Masters in Governance (Panafrican University Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences). He has published more than ten articles related to the domains of governance, politics, and international relations on topic including elections, migrations, geopolitics, geostrategy, conflict management, and public policy. He previously was an associate researcher at the Paul Ango Ela Foundation in Yaoundé.

Metassebia Hailu Zeleke

Metassebia Hailu Zeleke

Addis Ababa University
Ethiopia
Field of Study: African Studies
Title of Research: Institutionalizing Pan Africanism: Does it Have a Birth Defect or is it the Unfeasible Task?

Metassebia Hailu Zeleke is a PhD student at the Center for African and Oriental Studies of Addis Ababa University. He is also a practicing lawyer in the Ethiopian jurisdiction, a part-time lecturer at Unity University, Research Fellow at China- Africa Legal Research Center, and a consultant to the FOCAC Legal Forum. Currently, he is serving as a Vice President of the Ethiopian Lawyers Association (ELA). He is also an Editorial Board Chairman of the Ethiopian Bar Review, a peer reviewed law journal. His academic interest includes, but not limited to, Pan-Africanism, African legal systems, Legal anthropology, Peace & Security and African local knowledge.