Talks

Invited Talks, Lectures and Workshops

Invited Panelist. Roundtable “Trends in the New African Diasporic Literature.” MLA 2025. New Orleans, LA (US). 01/2025.

Invited Keynote. “‘For the salt it signifies’: Saltwater Ecologies in The History of Mary Prince.” E-SC Literature and Culture Student Conference. University of Bremen (Germany). 02/2024.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Translating Selves, Translating Media.” Centre for Translation Studies, Düsseldorf University (Germany). 01/2024.

Respondent: “Blue Humanities: A Response to Killian Quigley’s Reading Underwater Wreckage: An Encrusting Ocean (2023).” English and Theatre Studies Seminar Series, Melbourne University (Australia). 09/2023.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Feminist Environmental Humanities? From Rachel Carson to Wangechi Mutu: An Overview of Ecofeminist Approaches.” Feminist, Gender, Queer. VL. Susanne Gruß. University of Cologne (Germany). 07/2023.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Crossing Literary and Visual Media: Experimental Black Life Writing in Yrsa Daley-Ward’s Work.” Kiel University (Germany). 06/2023.

Invited Workshop Leader. “Between Home and Away: Contemporary Black British Poetry.” Experimental Voices: Race, Identity, History. Seminar. Melissa Schuh. Kiel University (Germany). 06/2023.

Invited Speaker. “On Resources: Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.” History and Theory – Early Modern Colloquium Series. University of Bonn (Germany). 01/2023.

Invited Workshop Leader. “From PhD Thesis to Defence: A Workshop for Early Career Researchers.” Postcolonial Narrations (GAPS Postgraduate Forum): Postcolonial Matters of Life and Death. University of Bonn (Germany). 10/2022.

Invited Speaker. “Salt / Water: Corrosive and Preservative Black Ecologies in The History of Mary Prince (1831).” Liminal Matters: Textures in Nineteenth-Century Material and Literary Cultures. Conference. University of Konstanz (Germany). 09/2022.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Experimental Black Life Writing: Yrsa Daley-Ward’s Instagram Poetry.” Postcolonial Dialogues. CEREP Lecture Series. University of Liège (Belgium). 05/2022.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Between Home and Away: Contemporary Black British Poetry.” Beginning Postcolonialism. Seminar. Elfi Bettinger. Department for English Literature and British Cultural Studies, JMU Würzburg (Germany). 05/2022.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Black Atlantic Ecologies: Nineteenth-Century Black Life Writing and/in the Plantationocene.” Research Seminar Series NTU English. Nottingham Trent University (UK). 02/2022. [Online]

Invited Speaker. “Mary Seacole’s Plant Matter(s): Vegetal Entanglements of the Black Atlantic in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857).” Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA). Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM). Philadelphia (US). 01/2022. [Online]

Invited Speaker. “Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Black Ecologies: Writing the Self, Writing the World.” DACH Victorianists. Workshop. 12/2021. [Online]

Invited Guest Lecture. “African Ecologies.” New Approaches in African Literary and Cultural Studies. Research Seminar. Gigi Adair. Bielefeld University (Germany). 05/2021. [Online]

Invited Workshop Leader. “Poetry in a Time of Protest.” Gender und Protest. Third Interdisciplinary Winter School of the Genderforum. JMU Würzburg (Germany). 02/2021. [Online]

Invited Speaker. “Skipping Verses between Past and Present: Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe.” Globalized (Neo-)Classicisms? Uses of Antiquity in Contemporary World Literatures. JMU Würzburg (Germany). 12/2020. [Online]

Invited Keynote. “’Punctuation’s Contradictory Performances’: Affective Relations in Contemporary Black British Poetry.” Postcolonial Narrations: Postcolonial Punctuation/s – Demarcations / Interventions / Transgressions. WWU Münster (Germany). 10/2019.

Interlocutor and Respondent. In/Visibility and Opacity: Cultural Productions by African and African Diasporic Women. VW Symposium. Organised by Anja Bandau (Hannover; Germany), Cheryl Finley (Cornell, US); Leigh Raiford (UC Berkeley, US) and Heike Raphael-Hernandez (Würzburg, Germany). Hannover (Germany). 07/2019.

Invited Speaker. “‘She was splintered wood and sea water’: Transoceanic Geocorpographies in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” International Workshop: “Africa in the Making of Modernity: Reconsidering the Black Atlantic” (Organizer: Dr. Sarah Fekadu-Uthoff). Centre for Advanced Studies, LMU Munich (Germany). 11/2017.

Invited Speaker. “Global Masculinities in the Postcolonial Metropolis: The Construction of Intimacy in Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith.” ICAS: Metamorphoses of the Political (Workshop “Relating Gender”). New Delhi (India). 10/2016.

Respondent. “African (Diasporic) Women Writers, Filmmakers, and Artists.” Together with Heike Raphael-Hernandez. BRIAS (Bavarian Research Institute of African Studies) Symposium: Afrika-Forschung in Bayern. Würzburg (Germany). 07/2016.

Invited Guest Lecture. “Gattungen und Sprachen des Romans im Umgang mit dem 'Biafra'-Krieg.” Mehr oder weniger Afrikanische Literatur (Seminar). Prof. Dr. Robert Stockhammer. Department for Comparative Literature, LMU Munich (Germany). 11/2015.

Panels Organised

Panel Convenor. With Sarah Dusend (Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies) and Anna Hollstegge (Stabsstelle Chancengerechtigkeit und Diversität, Bonn University). “Diversity in German Academia.” Diversity Days. Bonn University (Germany). 05/2023.

Panel Convenor. With Mariam Muwanga (Wuppertal). “Intermedial Sites of Resistance: From YouTube to Instapoetry and Beyond.” Stream 8: Media, Digital Technology and Connectivity. Afroeuropeans: Intersectional Challenges in Afroeuropean Communities. Brussels (Belgium). 07/2022.

Panel Convenor (2-Part Panel). “Ecological Solidarities, Vulnerabilities and Resistances.” Contested Solidarities: Agency and Victimhood in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. 32nd Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS). Frankfurt (Germany). 05/2022.

Panel Convenor. “Thoughts on Love in a Globalized World.” Research Workshop Literature in a Globalized World: Creative and Critical Perspectives. JNU Delhi (India). 02/2020.

Conference Papers

“Affect, Genre and the Slave Narrative: Archives of Feeling in The History of Mary Prince.” Anglistiktag 2024. Section: “Structures of Feeling? Affect and Genre in British and Anglophone Literatures.” Augsburg (Germany). 09/2024.

“Maroon Ecologies: The ‘Speech of Moses Bon Sàam’ (1735) and the Black Environmental Imagination in Eighteenth-Century Caribbean Life Writing.” 34th Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS). Zurich (Switzerland). 05/2024.

“Eco-Catastrophe and Coastal Kinship in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Short Fiction.” 18th Triennial EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) Conference. Paris (France). 06/2023.

“Preliminary Thoughts on Water as Method: Reading the Hydrocolony in Global Literature.” Postcolonial Infrastructure. 33rd Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS). Konstanz (Germany). 05/2023.

“Instapoetry, #BlackGirlMagic and Beyond: Approaches to Black Digital Feminism Today.” Mobile Feminisms Workshop. Würzburg (Germany). 05/2023.

“‘oh mary don’t you weep don’t you moan’: Re-Imagining Mary Prince in Contemporary Literature and Art.” Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Slavery, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean. Bonn (Germany). 03/2023.

“Loneliness and Contested Communities in Mary Prince’s Slave Narrative The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831).” Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World. Reading (UK). 11/2022.

“Black Atlantic Ecologies in Mary Prince.” Lunchtime Seminar: Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies. Glasgow (UK). 10/2022.

“Digital Diasporas and Dictaphones: Movements across Genre, Generations and the Globe in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” Anglistentag 2022. Section: “Nomadworld: Global Mobility and the New Anglophones.” Mainz (Germany). 09/2022. [Online]

“’The Power to be Affected’: Love, Desire and other Sticky Feelings in Postcolonial Literature.” Annual Conference of the German Association for Postcolonial Studies (GAPS). Frankfurt (Germany). 05/2022.

“Un/Inhabitable Worlds in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Eco-Fiction.” ALA (African Literature Association) Annual Conference. Adversity and Creativity: African Literature, Film, Media and Public Discourse. 05/2022. [Online]

“Mary Seacole’s Plant Matter(s): Vegetal Entanglements of the Black Atlantic.” North American Victorian Studies Association: Unsettling Victorians. University of Vancouver (Canada). 03/2022. [Online]

“Black Atlantic Botanical Knowledges in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857).” Pandemic Legacies: Health, Healing, and Medicine in the Age of Slavery and Beyond. Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery. Schomburg Center, New York Public Library (US). 10/2021. [Online]

“Intimate Coastal Ecologies in Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s ‘A Dhow Crosses the Sea.’” Breaking Boundaries: Reimagining Borders in Postcolonial and Migrant Studies. Manchester Metropolitan University: Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies (MAPS) (UK). 09/2021. [Online]

“’I trust England will not forget one who nursed her sick’: Nursing the Empire in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857).” Annual Conference of the German Association for Postcolonial Studies (GAPS). Oldenburg (Germany). 05/2021. [Online]

“Cross-Oceanic and Cross-Generational Intimacy in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” Migrant Belongings: Digital Practices and the Everyday. Utrecht University (The Netherlands). 04/2021. [Online]

“Sympoeisis and/in Anna Atkins' Algae Cyanotypes.” British Society for Literature and Science. 16th Annual Conference. Liverpool (UK). 04/2021. [Online]

“The Many Lives and Worlds of Mary Seacole: Travel, Nature and World-Making in The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857).” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. 42nd Annual Virtual Conference: Discovery. 03/2021. [Online]

“Black Men Walking: Reconfiguring British Memory Landscapes through Migratory Theatre Practices.” Imagining Migration, Knowing Migration: Intermedial Perspectives. JMU Würzburg (Germany). 02/2021. [Online]

“Of Fractures and Faultlines: Nat Raha’s Dissolution of Language.” GAPS (Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien). English in a World of Strangers: Rethinking World Anglophone Studies. Frankfurt (Germany). 05/2020. Cancelled due to the corona pandemic.

“From Insta-Poetry to Auto-Fictional Memoir: Intermedial Self-Writings in Yrsa Daley-Ward’s Works.” PG CWWN 7th Biennial Conference. New Configurations of Contemporary Women’s Writing. Hull (UK). 09/2019.

“Oceanic Refugee Imaginaries in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” GAPS (Gesellschaft für Anglophone Postkoloniale Studien). Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water. Bremen (Germany). 05/2019.

“Travelling Text: Shailja Patel’s Migritude.” Postcolonial Narrations: Moving Centers & Traveling Cultures. Frankfurt (Germany). 10/2018.

“Helen Oyeyemi: Queer (Be)longings Elsewhere”. “On Whose Terms? Ten Years On...” in Critical Negotiations in Black British Literature and the Arts. Goldsmiths University, London (UK). 03/2018.

“’Her body is a flooding home’: Transnational Trajectories in Warsan Shire.” ALA (African Literature Association) Annual Conference. Africa and the World: Literature, Politics, and Global Geographies. Yale University, New Haven (US). 06/2017.

“Dream Cities: Affective Spatiality in Zadie Smith’s North London Writings.” 16th Triennial EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) Conference. Performing the Urban: Embodiments, Inventories, Rhythms. Oviedo (Spain). 04/2017.

“Dis/Placed: Virtual Diasporas in Cecile Emeke’s YouTube Series Strolling.” Diasporas – 8th Global Meeting. Mansfield College, Oxford (UK). 07/2016.

“Strolling through the City: Postcolonial Identities on YouTube.” GAPS (Gesellschaft für Anglo-phone Postkoloniale Studien). The Postcolonial and the Material. Augsburg (Germany). 05/2016.

“Love, Between the Lines: Diasporic Wiggle Spaces in Helen Oyeyemi.” Afroeuropeans: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe V. WWU Münster (Germany). 09/2015.

“Pop und Porno: Wider den weißen männlichen Blick – Von Beyoncé bis Viktoria Modesta.” Ringvorlesung: Kulturen der Pornographie. Würzburg (Germany). 07/2015.

“Roots and Routes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.” Igbo Womanhood, Womanbeing and Personhood. SOAS, University of London (UK). 04/2015.

Public Engagement and Science Communication Activities

Public Lecture. “African Eco-Fiction: Planetary Violence and the Environmental Imagination.” [Online] Public Climate School 2022 – Students for Future Bonn. Bonn (Germany). 05/2022.

Book Talk. “Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Literature.” [Online] Nottingham Trent University English Research Seminar Series. In cooperation with Bonington Gallery’s Formations: An ongoing public events programme in response to Black History Month and the Decolonisation Agenda. Nottingham (UK). 02/2022.

Artist Talk ∙ Lauren Fournier. [Online] Workshop Between Fact and Fiction: Genre-Bending Life Narratives. Würzburg (Germany). 06/2021.

Public Reading and Writer’s Talk ∙ Olumide Popoola. [Online] International Conference Imagining Migration, Knowing Migration: Intermedial Perspectives. In cooperation with city library Falkenhaus. Würzburg (Germany). 02/2021.

Public Reading and Writer’s Talk ∙ Sharon Dodua Otoo. DRV-Summer School The Self and the Other: Afro-Diasporic Literatures. In cooperation with bookshop Neuer Weg. Würzburg (Germany). 09/2017.

Public Reading and Writer’s Talk ∙ Alain Mabanckou. DRV-Summer School The Self and the Other: Afro-Diasporic Literatures. Würzburg (Germany). 09/2017.

Introductory Film Lecture. “Theoretische Einführung: Mary & Max.” Andersein – Behinderung im Film. Institute for the History of Medicine in cooperation with Central Cinema. Würzburg (Germany). 10/2016.

Introductory Film Lecture. “Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre.” Film Club. In Cooperation with the Student Association, Faculty of Philosophy. JMU Würzburg (Würzburg). 10/2014.