SOAS University of London

Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa

Africa Department PhD Students

Sana Goyal
Goyal Sana - AFR PHD IMG 240 186 56

First Prizes, First Books: Carrying Countries in Contemporary Women’s Writing from the ‘African’ Diaspora

Portia Owusu
Portia Owusu

Spectres from the Past: The Politics of 'History', Memory and Slavery in West African and African-American Literature.

Robin Steedman
Robin Steedman

Nairobi-based Female Filmmakers and the ‘Creative Hustle’: Gender and Film Production between the Local and the Transnational

Recently Awarded PhDs

2016
  • Kate Bolgar Smith Soundtracks of the City: Listening to the Film Music of the Black Diaspora in London and Paris (Dr L Dovey)
  • Ying Cheng Is Theatre Dying in Nigeria? Recycling Popular Theatre in Metropolitan Lagos (Dr A Oyètádé)
  • Benedetta Lanfranchi Judging Crimes Against Humanity in Acholi - A philosophical Interpretation of the Use of Acholi Traditional Justice Mechanisms in the Aftermath of the War in Northern Uganda (Dr A Rettová)
2015
2014
  • Danielle Tran Post-apartheid Narratives of Trauma: Literary Representations of South Africa's Contemporary Traumas (Dr K Easton)

2013
  • Yoseph Mengistu "He was anointed because he was incarnated": Cyrillo- Alexandrian Orthodoxy in the view of modern Ethiopian theologians (Prof David Appleyard) 
  • Nathalie Montlouis Lords and Empresses in and out of Babylon: The EABIC community and the dialectic of female subordination (Dr A Oyètádé)
  • Charles Pigott Voices of the Mountains: Language and Identity in Andean Song (Prof G Furniss)
  • Aïsha Schmitt Nyoyo Zimefurahika: Urban Qasida in Zanzibar (Prof G Furniss)
2012
  • Caroline Mose Hip-hop in Nairobi: Interrogating Popular Culture and Its Socio-Political Intersections in Urban Africa (Dr C Githiora)
2011
  • Anita Adam Benadiri People of Somalia with particular Reference to the Reer Hamar of Mogadishu (Dr M Orwin)
  • Jarmo Pikkujamsa The search for Resolution in the Tensions of Senegalese Life: Francophone African writing with special reference to the novels of Ken Bugul (Prof G Furniss) 
  • Katriina Ranne - The Image of Water in the Poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi (Dr A Rettová)
  • Anne Schumann Danse philosophique! The Social and Political Dynamics of Zouglou Music in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, 1990-2008 (Prof G Furniss) 
2010
  • Jean Kamdem The Dynamics of Bilingual Adult Literacy in Africa: A Case Study of Kom, Cameroon (Dr C Githiora)
2009
  • Mark Brogden The Culture of Exploration: British Expeditions to Northern Nigeria, 1822-1827 (Prof G Furniss)
2008
  • Betty Sibongile Dlamini Women and Theatre for Development in Swaziland (Dr Frances Harding)
  • Zoe Norridge Perceptions of Pain: Narratives of Hurt and Healing in Contemporary African Literature (Dr K Osei-Nyame, Jnr)
2007
  • Lizzy Attree The Literary Response to HIV and AIDS in South Africa and Zimbabwe, 1990–2005 (Dr K Easton)