Africa Department Staff
Head of Department
Undergraduate Tutor
Postgraduate Tutor
Terms 1 & 2, 2009-10: Prof. Philip Jaggar
Term 3, 2009-10: Dr Kai Easton
Undergraduate Admissions Tutor
Term 1, 2009-10: Dr Lindiwe Dovey
Terms 2 & 3, 2009-10: Dr Martin Orwin
Chair of the Sub-Board of Examiners
Term 1, 2009-10: Dr Alena Rettová
Terms 2 & 3, 2009-10: Dr Lindiwe Dovey
Personal Tutor to Year 1
Term 1, 2009-10: Dr Alena Rettová
Terms 2 & 3, 2009-10: Dr Martin Orwin
Personal Tutor to Years 2, 3 & 4
To be confirmed
Graham Furniss
Professor of African Language Literature
African language literature; comparative African literature; Hausa language, linguistics and literature
- Tel: 020 7898 4366
- Email: gf1@soas.ac.uk
- Room: 110
Philip J Jaggar
Professor of West African Linguistics
Hausa language and linguistics; comparative Chadic.
- Tel: 020 7898 4387
- Email: pj@soas.ac.uk
Lutz Marten
Reader in General and African Linguistics
Semantics; pragmatics; dynamic syntax; historical linguistics; comparative Bantu; Swahili; Herero.
- Tel: 020 7898 4653
- Email: lm5@soas.ac.uk
Lindiwe Dovey
Lecturer in African Film and Performance Arts
African film and video (particularly their intersection); filmic mediations of African performance arts (music, dance, theatre); literary adaptation in Africa; contemporary film theory and 'World Cinema'; exile/immigration and violence in relation to African screen media; structures of film production, distribution, and exhibition in Africa; use of African languages in film
- Tel: 020 7898 4388
- Email: ld18@soas.ac.uk
Kai Easton
Lecturer in African Literature and Diaspora Studies
Colonial and postcolonial studies, especially South African literature (the Cape, Wicomb, Coetzee); gender and the culture of travel; Indian Ocean diasporas; theories of fiction and history.
- Tel: 020 7898 4373
- Email: ke@soas.ac.uk
- Room: 409
- Office Hours: Thursdays, 3-5
Chege Githiora
Senior Lecturer in Swahili
Swahili language, literature and linguistics; lexicography; Kikuyu language and literature; language planning and policy in East Africa; African diaspora in Latin America; language and culture in East Africa; orthography and standardization of African languages.
- Tel: 020 7898 4395
- Email: cg17@soas.ac.uk
Martin Orwin
Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic
Somali and Amharic language and literature; metrics and use of language in poetry.
- Tel: 020 7898 4376
- Email: mo1@soas.ac.uk
Kwadwo Osei-nyame
Lecturer in African Literature
Post-colonial writing with special reference to anglophone and francophone African writing and African American writing; comparative national literatures; African literature and nationalism; gender in literature; literature and society in Southern Africa; African cultural studies with reference to the Akan of Ghana and the Igbo of Nigeria; literature and human rights in Africa.
- Tel: 020 7898 4377
- Email: ko9@soas.ac.uk
Akin Oyètádé
Senior Lecturer in Yoruba
Yorùbá language and literature; Yorùbá culture and linguistics with special reference to phonology; Yorùbá in the diaspora.
- Tel: 020 7898 4378
- Email: ao2@soas.ac.uk
Alena Rettová
Lecturer in Swahili Literature and Culture
Swahili literature; African philosophy; Afrophone philosophical discourses; literatures in African languages
- Tel: 020 7898 4372
- Email: ar42@soas.ac.uk
Dmitry Bondarev
Research Assistant
Nigerian Koranic Manuscripts Project (funded by the AHRC)
- Tel: 020 7898 4383
- Email: db5@soas.ac.uk
Louis Brenner
Professorial Research Associate
History of Islam in Africa; History of Religion; African thought
Jeff Opland
Visiting Professor of African Language Literatures
Folklore and oral literature; African praise poetry; the history of Xhosa literature
- Email: jo8@soas.ac.uk
- Room: 463
