Researcher

My Expertise

Comparative Global Indigenous/Bla(c)k Race, Cultures, Literatures and Arts; Comparative Bla(c)k Epistemologies, (eco)Aesthetics and Poetics; Posthumanism, Postcolonialism and Decolonial Critique; Environmental Humanities

Keywords

Fields of Research (FoR)

Aesthetics, Postcolonial studies, African literature, Comparative and transnational literature, Critical theory, Literary studies, Literary theory, Cultural studies

Biography

I hold a BA in English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo), an MA in Literary Stylistics (University of Birmingham-UK), and a PhD in English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney). I am also an alumnus of the 2019 Harvard Institute for World Literature session, and a recipient of the 2025 Balzan Colloquium Award, fully funded by Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature, for presenting my work at the institute’s colloquium on Literary Responses to...view more

I hold a BA in English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo), an MA in Literary Stylistics (University of Birmingham-UK), and a PhD in English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney). I am also an alumnus of the 2019 Harvard Institute for World Literature session, and a recipient of the 2025 Balzan Colloquium Award, fully funded by Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature, for presenting my work at the institute’s colloquium on Literary Responses to Ecological Crisis. My primary and broad research interests span Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism, Aesthetics and Politics, and Literature and Philosophy. My much narrower interest is in multilingual Environmental Humanities in the context of Comparative Black and Indigenous Race, Cultures, Literatures and Arts, with focus on their epistemologies, (eco)aesthetic and poetics. My work uses an intersubjective ethnography approach for a (renovated) critical reading of Indigenous literature, grounded within Indigenous cultures and values, and developed through meaningful interpersonal relations. To attend to the global pertinence of these literatures, I bring African Indigenous theories of knowledge into conversation with both other world Indigenous forms of knowledge creation and the post-Enlightenment forms of critical thinking that underpin much contemporary environmental discourse and policy development. I am currently working on a literary and cultural project funded by a British Academy ODA Challenge-Oriented Research grant, on “Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC (June 2024-December 2026); and a UNSW-KU Leuven collaborative seed fund project in energy humanities, on "Technological Innovation and Energy Justice with Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs in D.R.Congo" to set up an international multidisciplinary collaborative research network among researchers from UNSW-Sydney (Australia), KU Leuven (Belgium), Université de Lubumbashi and Université de Kisangani (DR Congo), in preparation for larger research grant applications (January-December 2025). The eclecticism of my research also informs my teachings in Colonialism: Resistance, Justice and Transition; Comparative Global Indigenous Histories and Politics; Media, Culture and Everyday Life; Media, Climate Crisis, and Extinction; Digital Cultures; and Race, Media, and Politics. My published work has appeared in Theory, Culture and Critique, Cogent Arts and Humanities, European Journal of English and American Studies, and Transmotion. Parts of my work have also been presented in conferences at Harvard University, Cambridge University, University of Sydney, UNSW-Sydney, Western Sydney University, and London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research. To end with, I have also previously worked, and I still maintain abiding interest, in emergency and development projects management and coordination, research in gender and agriculture, cultural affairs, as well as translation and interpreting.


My Grants

 

Global Seed Fund to set up an international multidisciplinary collaborative research network among researchers from UNSW-Sydney (Australia), KU Leuven (Belgium), Université de Lubumbashi and Université de Kisangani (DR Congo) in preparation for research grant applications in energy humanities, worth €49K (January-December 2025).

 

British Academy ODA Challenge-Oriented Research Grant on Power and Voice in Climate Change (June 2024-December 2026). Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC, ref # IOCRG\101313 (£147,298.13), joint with Sarah Arens (University of Liverpool), Nicola Thomas (University of Lancaster), Blake Ewing (University of Nottingham) and Emery Mudinga (ISDR/Bukavu).

 

UNSW ADA Innovation Hub Creative Confidence Annual $1.5K p.a grants (2021-2022).

 


My Qualifications

PhD English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney)

MA Literary Stylistics (U. of Birmingham-UK)

BA English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo)


My Awards

         

Balzan Colloquium fully funded award to attend and present my work at the 2025 Institute for World Literature session on "Literary Responses to Ecological Crisis", Harvard University

UNSW Scientia PhD Scholarship, AU$52K p.a. + full tuition fee, 2018-2023

Birmingham International Scholarship, £10,000 p.a. 2013-2014.    

All-Saints Overseas Scholarship, £12,500 p.a, 2013-2014

US Fulbright Scholarship for an MA in TESOL (declined), 2012

 


My Research Activities

I am currently working on two projects, including:

1. Localising the Anthropocene: Reconceptualising Time, Place, and Knowledge for local meanings of and response to Climate Change, Environmental Protection and justice in the Congo Tropical Forest region

This project focuses on climate fiction from countries across the Congo Basin forest to unpack how time, place, knowledge and their entailments of humans and nonhumans entanglements are conceptualised, as well as implications for the local meanings of the Anthropocene, climate change, environmental protection, justice, and policies. Part of this project has attracted funding from the British Academy, for a joint project titled “Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC”, hosted by the University of Liverpool” (Award of £ 147,298.13, Reference: IOCRG\101313). Under this joint project, my work will investigate the cultural memory of climate change, land and land rights in the Eastern Congo in oral and narratives from diverse sources, including the Liaspo-The Congolese Tales audio archives at Manchester Central Library.

 

2. Black Memories and Epistemologies: The Poetics of Cosmopolitan Identity in Afro-Diasporic World Literature

This project studies how contemporary Afro-Diasporic World Literature epitomises black memories and epistemologies as the writers’ negotiation of a black identity in a cosmopolitan locatedness. The history of Africans’ “emigration directly or indirectly precipitated the emergence of a new wave of African writings with diasporic leanings. There is also a trans-generational dynamic to this history, as some of the émigrés fed with their children, who later came of age in the West but still maintained various forms of affiliations and attachments to Africa” (Adebayo 2023, 74). African affiliations and attachments are enacted in black memories and epistemologies, which interface and intermesh with issues of race, gender, ecology, and identity. Black memory is a complex concept, following Abdulrazak Gurnah (2023)’s view of writing memory as the writer’s hinterland, the source materials, the place where the writer goes to check the plausibility of certain notions and ideas, the writer’s experience of events, the stories s/he has heard about other people or places, or news and histories s/he has read about, or dreams and imaginings that thrilled or baffled him/her. This project construes black memories and epistemologies as both resisting Black fungibility and disintegration, while at the same time copyrighting black cultural authorship in world literature.

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