School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Dr Ret’sepile Makamane
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Key information
Key information
- Roles
- School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Lecturer in African Studies, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow
- Qualifications
- PhD (SOAS), MA Development Studies and Gender (University of Leeds), MA Creative Writing (University of East Anglia), BA Theatre and Philosophy (National University of Lesotho)
- Subject
- Africa
- Email address
- rm68@soas.ac.uk
Biography
Dr Ret’sepile Makamane is Lecturer in African Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Her interdisciplinary research brings together comparative, orality, classics and African studies and focuses on decolonising the study of literatures from the Global South, particularly Africa and the Caribbean.
Ret’sepile currently leads the project; EpicAfrica: Reimagining Southern Epistemologies through African Epics, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the Future Leaders Fellowship scheme. The project centres African epics, and looks at how epics shape intellectual histories across the continent, the African diaspora and beyond. This intra/interdisciplinary and comparative research will create a platform of discussion and the basis for intellectual intervention and praxis to advance and expand cultural-literary discourse on epic.
The project straddles performance, music, linguistics, translation, philosophical/historical and heritage/archive studies. It aims to develop wider theoretical frameworks and methodological innovation for deeper engagement with African epics.
Her publications include Listening to Thomas Mofolo and Sesotho Orature - A Decolonial Approach to the African Novel and Comparative Literature, Legenda Cambridge (2026).
