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Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Strathclyde

I joined the University of Strathclyde in January 2019 after 18 years at the University of Stirling. I have written widely on postcolonial topics—Francophone African literature and cinema; politics and culture in Senegal; national identity debates in France—and I have published articles on these topics in journals such as New Left Review, French Cultural Studies, Third Text and Research in African Literatures.

I am currently working on two projects that engage with the history of pan-Africanism: the first examines black anti-colonial movements in the interwar period; the second traces the development of pan-African cultural festivals since the 1950s.

I am the author of two monographs, Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction (James Currey, 2000), and (with Patrick Williams), Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten Directors (Manchester University Press, 2007). I am also co-editor of several collections of essays: with Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Thresholds of Otherness (Grant & Cutler, 2002); with Charles Forsdick, Francophone Postcolonial Studies (Arnold, 2003), and Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World (Liverpool University Press, 2009); with Michelle Keown and James Procter, Comparing Postcolonial Diasporas (Palgrave, 2009); with Lizelle Bisschoff, Africa's Lost Classics (Legenda, 2014) and The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966 (Liverpool UP, 2016).

I completed a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (Jan-Dec 2012), which allowed me to complete a monograph on the Senegalese anti-colonial militant Lamine Senghor (to be published by Verso in 2023).

Experience

  • 2019–present
    Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Strathclyde
  • 2000–2018
    Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Stirling

Education

  • 1998 
    Trinity College, Dublin, PhD, French