African Languages, Literatures and Cultures Network

This network will run from 2022 to 2024. 

Heri Tukijuana Kuliko Tukitupana

Better That We Know One Another Than That We Abandon One Another

The African Languages, Literatures and Cultures TORCH Network offers an interdisciplinary meeting space for a wide range of perspectives and projects engaging with African cultures, languages and literatures at the University of Oxford and beyond. It complements the African Studies Centre, reaching across the University and departments. It aims to bring together scholars based at institutions across the UK, to raise the status of African humanities and scholarship nationally.

We seek to foster discussions, debates and collaborations, bridging the divides of language, discipline and region, and moving beyond a focus on Anglophone countries and literatures. We bring together African intellectual and cultural history, philosophy, performance, film and theatre studies, visual arts, literature studies, and other fields related to African arts and creativity.

We also seek to centre African voices, histories, and ways of knowing in contemporary debates about African Studies and the academy.  

Emphasising in particular the contributions of African scholars and early-career researchers, in the next two years we will organise research seminars, book launches, readings groups (with readings circulated in advance) workshops and conferences open to all. Founding members of the network come from the disciplines of Modern Languages, African Studies and English Literature and we welcome participants from across the University and beyond. Please feel free to email us or contact us through Twitter if you would like to be a part of the network, co-organise an event with us, or share your thoughts on key research areas you would like the network to engage with.

Network leads:

Dr Dorothée Boulanger -Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Modern Languages, Jesus College

Dr Rachel Taylor - Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Junior Research Fellow, Jesus College

Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu - Junior Research Fellow in African and Comparative Literature, St Anne's College

Prof. Elleke Boehmer - Professor of World Literature in the English Faculty

You can also follow us on Twitter @AfCulturesOx.

Please let us know any questions to afculturesox@torch.ox.ac.uk.

To subscribe to the mailing list please send a blank email to afculturesox-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

This network will run from 2022 - 2024.