UBC Department of English Language & Literatures is pleased to welcome Tolulope Akinwole, who will begin his appointment as Assistant Professor, tenure-track, as of July 1, 2024.
Akinwole’s research interests revolve around global Black literatures, African cultural studies, and critical geography. He obtained master’s degrees in Literary Studies, African Cultural Studies, and English Language from UW-Madison and the University of Lagos. In 2016, he was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of African Cultural Studies at UW-Madison.
His PhD research, which examines the public bus as key material through which to reorient critical engagements with the global Black city, has been supported by the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers’ Associations, the African Studies Research Award, the Ebrahim Hussein Research Fellowship, and the Institute for Research in the Humanities at UW-Madison.
Akinwole’s writings on global Black literatures, African urban representations, and Afro-diasporic mobilities have appeared in the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society, and the Journal of the African Literature Association.
“I have long admired the UBC Department of English Language & Literatures, not just for the quality of research produced by its faculty but also because the Department is deeply aware of the epistemic violence that has long shaped linguistic and literary studies,” says Akinwole. “I admire the Department’s substantive actions in addressing this violence and, in the process, pushing the disciplinary boundaries of English language and literary studies. I am looking forward to taking part in that work.”
