SOAS University of London

Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies (CCLPS)

CCLPS Members

CCLPS Chair

Professor Francesca Orsini

Research Tutor

Professor Stephen Dodd

Convenors

Dr Sara Marzagora, MA in Cultural Studies
Prof Wen-Chin Ouyang, MA Comparative Literature (Africa/Asia)
Dr James Caron, MA in Postcolonial Studies

Centre Steering Committee

Francesca Orsini
Chair
Francesca Orsini
Hindi Literature; North Indian literary cultures; Hindi; Urdu.
  • Tel: + 44(0)20 7898 4242
  • Email: fo@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 419
  • Office Hours: Mondays 1-3pm
Alena Rettová
Member
Alena Rettova

Swahili literature; African philosophy; Afrophone philosophical discourses; literatures in African languages

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4372
  • Email: ar42@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 413
  • Office Hours: Tuesday 3-5pm
Wen-chin Ouyang
Member
Wen-chin Ouyang
Classical and modern Arabic literature and culture, with emphasis on narrative and storytelling, comparative narratology and critical theory, and gendered thinking and discourse.
Ayman El-Desouky
Member
Ayman El-Desouky

Comparative Literature, 19th and 20th Century Arabic Literature, hermeneutics, modern philosophy and theory.

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4355
  • Email: ad48@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 423
  • On Sabbatical:On leave 2015-16
Stephen Dodd
Member
Steve Dodd
Modern Japanese literature, with particular interest in representations of the native place (furusato), gender/sexuality and modernity
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4216
  • Email: sd5@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 381
  • Office Hours: Wednesday 3-4pm/Email for an appointment
Rachel V Harrison
Member
Rachel Harrison
Modern Thai Cultural Studies, Cinema and Literature; gender studies with reference to Thailand; literary criticism and South East Asian Literatures in a comparative context; Western film set in South East Asia
  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4247
  • Email: rh6@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 455
  • Office Hours: Fridays 1.30-3.30pm
Dana Healy
Member
Dana Healy
Modern Vietnamese cultural studies (literature, film, gender); Vietnamese social and cultural history (the Vietnam War; art and politics); the sociology of contemporary Vietnamese literature; the Vietnamese diaspora
  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4252
  • Email: dh4@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 465
  • On Sabbatical:On sabbatical, 2016-17
Michael J Hutt
Member
Michael Hutt
Nepali literature; the Nepali media; Nepali politics; Bhutanese refugees.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4286
  • Email: mh8@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B400
  • Office Hours: Email for an appointment
Griseldis Kirsch
Member
Griseldis Kirsch

Contemporary Japanese culture, with particular interest in Japanese media and popular culture, representations of 'Otherness', social phenomena and war memory.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4288
  • Email: gk10@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 377
  • Office Hours: Email for an appointment
Grace Koh
Member
Grace Koh

Korean and East Asian literary traditions (prose and fiction); literary and intellectual history; travel literature and cultural encounters; critical theory and comparative literature

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4290
  • Email: gk5@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 385
  • Office Hours: Tuesday 2-3pm/Thursday 3-4pm (term time only)
Karima Laachir
Member
Karima Laachir

Literary and cultural studies: postcolonial studies, diaspora studies and comparative literature

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4336
  • Email: kl19@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 365
  • Office Hours: Fridays 12-1.30pm

Core Members

Nadje Al-Ali
Member
Nadje Al-Ali

Women & gender in the Middle East; women’s movements and feminism in Middle East; secularism and Islamism; transnational migration, diaspora mobilization; gendering violence, war and peace; history of Iraqi women; impact of sanctions, war and occupation on Iraqi women, Iraq.

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4547
  • Email: na@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 452A
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays 10-11am and Thursdays 3-4pm
  • On Sabbatical:Term 1
Keya Anjaria
Member
Keya Anjaria

The Novel; 20th Century Turkish Literature; Turkish Cinema; World Literature; Comparative Literature;  20th Century Literary Criticism; Modernity and Modernization in late 19th and 20th Century Turkey.

Cosima Bruno
Member
Cosima Bruno

Contemporary Chinese poetry; translation studies; Chinese language art; Sinophone literatures

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4421
  • Email: cb65@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 456
  • Office Hours: Term 1: Wednesdays 2-3pm
James Caron
Member
James Caron

Islam in South Asia; Afghanistan and Pakistan; Indo-Persianate sociocultural history; transnational non-Western history; activism and social movements.

Pamela Corey
Pamela Corey

Modern and contemporary art and critical theory; Southeast Asian art history and visual studies (expertise in Vietnam and Cambodia); urban studies; postcolonial studies; theories of subjectivity, space, diaspora, transnationalism, intermedia and aesthetics.

  • Tel: 0207 898 4452
  • Email: pc50@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B318
  • Office Hours: Mondays 2-4pm
Yorgos Dedes
Member
Yorges Dedes
Early Anatolian Turkish; Ottoman language and literature; Ottoman history; Turkish-Greek relations; modern Turkish culture
  • Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4344
  • Email: gd5@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 424
  • Office Hours: Friday 15:00 - 17:00
Lindiwe Dovey
Member
Lindiwe Dovey

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: +44(0) 20 7898 4388
  • Email: ld18@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 404
  • Office Hours: Email for an appointment
Rachel Dwyer
Member
Rachel Dwyer
Hindi Cinema; Indian popular culture; Indian film; Hinduism; new middle classes; Mumbai/Bombay; Gujarati language and literature; Gujarati diaspora esp UK and East Africa; comparative Indian literature.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4294
  • Email: rd3@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 457
  • Office Hours: Please e-mail for an appointment
  • On Sabbatical:On Research Leave, Term 2 (2016-17)
Kai Easton
Member
Kai Easton

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: +44 (0)20 7898 4373
  • Email: ke@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 394
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment
Rossella Ferrari
Member
Ferrari Rossella - CIA IMG 485 186 56
Chinese-language theatres; Chinese-language cinemas; intercultural performance; theories and practices of the avant-garde
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4047
  • Email: rf24@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 399a
  • Office Hours: Term 1 ONLY: Thursday 11.30-12.30 or appointment*
  • On Sabbatical:Term 2, 2016/17
Bernhard Fuehrer
Member
Bernhard Fuehrer
Classical Chinese philology, rhetoric, philosophy and literature; the history of Sinology in Europe; reception of the canon with specific reference to the Analects
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4218
  • Email: bf3@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 398
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 12-1pm
Andrew Gerstle
Member
Drew Gerstle
Japanese literature, drama and thought, primarily of the Tokugawa period, with particular interest in Bunraku and Kabuki theatre and the plays of Chikamatsu
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4207
  • Email: ag4@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 390
  • Office Hours: Wednesday 11am-12noon/Email for an appointment
Marlé Hammond
Marle Hammond

Senior Lecturer in Arabic Popular Literature & Culture.  

  • Tel: 020 7898 4518
  • Email: mh93@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 438
  • Office Hours: Wednesday 2-3pm; Friday 11am-12pm
Sian Hawthorne
Sian Hawthorne

Narrativity; Cultural Memory; Religion and Gender; Feminist Historiography; Postcolonial theory; Postsecularism and gender; Intellectual history in the study of religions.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4215
  • Email: sh79@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 337
  • Office Hours: Thursdays 11am-12pm
Angela Impey
Member
Angela Impey
Music of southern Africa and the African Horn (Sudan); advocacy ethnomusicology; sound/music, memory and place; forced migration, cultural mapping and borderland identities; human rights and development
Marianna Klar
Member, CCLPS
Staff Silhouette

Classical Arabic literature, Islamic Prophetic Literature, Comparative literature

Andrew H-B Lo
Member
Andrew Lo
Chinese language (Cantonese and Mandarin); fiction and prose from the Ming-Qing periods; cultural activities of Ming and Qing scholars, especially games; export paintings; traditional horticulture
  • Tel: 020 7898 4213
  • Email: al3@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 393
  • Office Hours: Mondays 11am-12noon/Fridays 11am-12noon
Xiaoning Lu
Xiaoning Lu

Chinese film history and criticism; modern Chinese popular culture; visual culture and media technology; cultural governance; socialist modernity

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4670
  • Email: xl1@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 453
  • Office Hours: Thursdays 3 - 4 pm, Term 3 Research Leave
Nima Mina
Member
Staff Silhouette
Classical and Modern Persian literature, Orientalism in 18th-20th century Europe, Middle Eastern minority writers in Europe, Diaspora studies, music performance, translation studies
  • Tel: 020 7898 4315
  • Email: nm46@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 422
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 13:00-15:00 / Weds 11:00-13:00
Ben Murtagh
Member
Ben Murtagh
Modern Indonesian cinema and literature; queer​ ​studies and sexuality in Indonesia; representation​ ​
of genders and sexuality in Southeast Asian film​ ​and literatures; traditional Malay literature
  • Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4248
  • Email: bm10@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 466
  • Office Hours: (Term 2) Monday 1-2pm, Thursday 2-3pm
Martin Orwin
Member
Martin Orwin
Somali language and literature; metrics and use of language in poetry; the relationship between language and music; Amharic.
Kwadwo Osei-Nyame, Jnr
Member
Kwadwo Osei-Nyame, Jnr
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.
Renate Söhnen-Thieme
Member
Renate Sohnen Thieme
Sanskrit language and literature; classical Indian religions; folklore and music of Baltistan
Stefan Sperl
Member
Sperl Stefan

Arabic Literature Classical and Modern; Comparative Literature; Qur’an and Hadith Studies; Islamic Art; Sufism and Neoplatonism; Refugee and Exile Studies

Charles R H Tripp
Member
Charles Tripp

Middle East: states and ideologies, war, Islamic political thought

  • Tel: 020 7898 4748
  • Email: ct2@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 214
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays 10- 12
Amina Yaqin
Member
Amina Yaqin
Urdu language and literature; post-colonial literature and theory; gender studies; South Asian literatures in English; feminism in a Third World context; gender and politics in Pakistan
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4305
  • Email: ay@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 470
  • Office Hours: Thursday 11am-12pm; Friday 2.30-3.30pm
Tian Yuan Tan 陳靝沅
Member
Tian Yuan Tan
Pre-modern Chinese literature, with emphasis on drama, fiction, and poetry in the later dynasties; Chinese literary history and historiography; court theatre and performance; cross-cultural interactions between China and other countries
  • Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4570
  • Email: tt26@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 396
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 4-5pm(Term Time), or by email appointment

Associate Members

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali

Youth cultural studies/production, transnational & diasporic Muslim youth identities; race, gender & culture in education; qualitative research methodologies.

Louise Harrington
Associate Member
Louise Harrington

Comparative partitions; conflict and post-conflict literature and cinema; border studies; migration and diaspora studies; South Asia; Ireland; Israel/Palestine.

Hasan Majid
Hasan Majid

Postcolonialism and Islam; or 'Islamic Postcolonialism', images of Islam and Muslims in contemporary British novel, colonial and postcolonial novel

Visiting Scholars

Heejung Cha
Heejung Cha

Women's Literature, Gender, Sexuality, Diaspora, Ethnicity, Ecofeminism, Postcolonialism, Multiculturalism, Transnationalism, Pedagogy

Ruth Mas
Staff Silhouette

Religious Studies, Comparative Literature, Islamic Intellectual Traditions, Critical Theory and Continental Philosophy, Theories of Power, Secularism and Subjectivity.

Research Associates

Rehnuma Sazzad
Rehnuma Sazzad

Critical Theory (especially Postcolonialism), Contemporary Arab and South Asian Literatures, Concepts of Exile and Diaspora, Humanistic Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, Cultural Histories, World Cinema

Research Fellows

Sara Marzagora
Sara Marzagora

African intellectual history, African philosophy, African critical theory, History of African political thought, Ethiopian history, Ethiopian literatures (particularly Amharic), Intellectual history of the Horn of Africa, Literatures in African languages, Political philosophy, Philosophy of history, Cultural studies.