Candidates 2020/2021

Fábio Ferreira Agra is a PhD candidate in the Communication postgraduate program at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). He holds a master in Letter: Culture, Education and Languages by the Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia (UESB) and a bachelor in Communication/Journalism (UESB). He was a visiting scholar in the project Futures under Constructions at the University of Tübingen (Germany, 2018/2020) and is member of TRAVESSIA – Centre of Global South Studies and Research (UFF). Fábio's research interests are journalism, narratives, borders and migration. 

Erika Angélica Alcantar García (Mexico City, 1990) graduated in history and holds a M.A. in Urban Planning from UNAM. She specializes in urban history of Mexico City. She is a member of the OBSINTER of the Institute of Social Research and the Ibero-American Network of Urban History. She works as a professor in the degree of urban planning at UNAM since 2015, in the areas of Projects and Urban Culture. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in urban planning postgraduate center at UNAM, within the line of "Urban Theory and Culture", where she develops the thesis entitled "Urban form and urban cultures: tensions in the mode of production of space in Mexico City (1960-1988)".

Oladele Ayorinde, an educator, pianist and cultural entrepreneur, is a ‘THInK’ (Transforming the Humanities through Interdisciplinary Knowledge) Doctoral Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa. Recently, he was also appointed as a Research Fellow of the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town.  Situated within Music and Anthropology, Oladele’s doctoral research project is exploring the nexus between music, agency and social transformation in contemporary Africa. His research focuses on the political economy of Fuji music—a contemporary Yoruba popular music genre—in Lagos, Nigeria. Oladele is exploring how the so-called ‘street musicians’, Fuji musicians are re-imagining the society through their music and its ‘associated practices’, and what this enterprise might mean for the understanding of socio-cultural, political and economic transformation in a cosmopolitan African city like  Lagos. Oladele’s research interests include South African music; Nigerian music; cultural and creative industries; archival theories, practice and management; ethnographies of African cultures, people and arts; artistic research in Africa, curating and theorising festivals; Global South studies; the political economy of popular music in Africa.

Ibrahima Karamoko is a doctoral student in Modern Letters, with an option in African novels, at the University of Félix HOUPHOUËT-BOIGNY in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire). After obtaining a Baccalaureate in the A2 series at the Lycée Moderne de Divo (city) where he chaired the Literary Club for two years, he obtained a Diploma of General Studies in Modern Letters, then a Bachelor's degree. He holds a Master's degree in research and a DEA, written on the Grotesque in the war novel of French-speaking Africa. He is currently pursuing his research on the same subject, in nine novels: Murambi (Boubacar B. Diop), L'Aîne (L'Aîne), L'Aîne (L'Aîne) and L'Aîne (L'Aîne). Diop), L'Aîne des orphelins (Tierno Monénembo), L'ombre d'Imana (Véronique Tadjo), Les Aubes écarlates (Léonoraiano), La Rébellion de Zantigui (Mahoua Bakayoko), L'état Z'héros ou la guerre des Gaous (Maurice Bandaman), Transit (Abdourahman A. Waberi), Johnny chien méchant( Émmanuel Dongala), Sans Capote ni kalachnikov ( Blaise N'dala).
He proposes to present a literature of the "Global South" under the angle of the grotesque and Transversality, as an archetype of globalization, in the framework of the PhD Certificate program.

Obakeng Kgongoane is a PhD student in the Digital Culture & Media Studies postgraduate degree program at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She holds a M.A. degree in Film and Television Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. She also lectures film studies, and visual studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Pretoria, respectively. Her research focuses on the geo-political landscape of the popular Afrofuturistic film Black Panther (2018). In particular, her research interest lays in analysing the film’s representation of a postcolonial, decolonial and feminist underground in the African future; a representation she frames as ‘Afro future-Mining’.

Karina Lamas holds a B.A. and a M.A. in English Literature by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She is currently a PhD candidate at UNAM, and her ongoing research is titled “The Intertextual Hybridity as a Metatheatrical Strategy in Three Adaptations by Wole Soyinka: The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, Death and the King’s Horseman y Opera Wonyosi. Karina’s areas of interest primarily concern anglophone African literature, hybridity studies and cultural translation, self-reflexive literature (metafiction and metatheatricality), adaptation studies and Global South Studies.

Lallie Abessy Jean Michel received his M.A. in African Literature. In his M.A. thesis he worked on the question of narration, polyphony and the genocide in Rwanda in the novel L'ombre d'Imana. Voyages jusqu'au bout du Rwanda by Véronique Tadjo. Currently, he is interested in drafts of this author's work. While adopting an approach combining literary criticism and textual genetics, he seeks to understand how Tadjo wrote her novel and which steps lie between the draft of the novel and the final work. Lallie Abessy’s research interests are genocide, testimonials, critique génétique, narration.

Lieli Loures holds a B.A. in Social Communication and a M.A. in Communication Sciences. She is currently a PhD student at Federal Fluminense University, Brazil. In her thesis she investigates "Rape Culture: Women's body as Territory of Political Dispute."

Beatriz Medeiros holds a B.A. in Media Studies and a M.A. in Communication. In her M.A. thesis she studied the performance of authenticity as a strategy for obtaining visibility employed by feminist artist Amanda Palmer. She currently is a Ph.D. candidate in the area of Communication at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Brazil. Her ongoing research is titled: "Support Networks and Activism: The Permanence and Presence of Women in the Music Industry from a Global South Perspective". Her research interests are Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, Music and Sociability, Decolonial and Global South Studies, and Digital Culture.

Esteban Morera Aparicio is a teacher and doctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen. The name of his dissertation is "The Battle for Time. Temporalities and political languages in gaitanism". He is a historian from the Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia), and has a master's degree in the history of the Hispanic world from the Universidad Jaume I de Castellón (Spain). He is a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Global South Studies (Germany), as well as at the research group Nación Cultura Memoria (Colombia). His research and publications have focused on political history, urban history, populism and the relationship between political languages and space. This relationship is reflected in his latest book, "La ciudad gaitanista", published by the Universidad del Rosario. 

Ibrahima Ndiaye is a doctoral student at the University of Dakar. After obtaining his master's degree in Francophony literature, he entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Dakar to obtain a master's degree in Pedagogy. He is currently carrying out research at the University of Tübingen on the subject of "African novels and discourse with Yves Valentin Mudimbe and Georges NgaL".

Christopher Otieno Omolo (Kenya)  is  completing PhD in Political Science at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany. He researches on Regional Conflict Management and the Transformation of Regional Organizations in Africa focusing on the African Union (AU), Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). He has previously taught at the Institute for Regional Integration and Development (IRID) at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), in Nairobi, Kenya. He also served with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, in Kenya. Christopher holds a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy (M.P.P.) at the University of Erfurt, Germany, and a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) degree in Philosophy from the University of Zimbabwe. His research interests are  African Regionalism, Comparative Regionalism, Regional Security, Conflict Transformation, and Humanitarian Governance.

Nadia Christelle Sia holds a master in Moderns Letters at Felix Houphouët Boigny University of Abidjan. She currently works as French teacher at Bora Teacher Institute and is also a PhD student at Felix Houphouët Boigny University. Her research project is titled '' Afropean experience and literary creation: psychocritical reading of Bessora 's literary work". She is interested in African francophone literature, Afropean culture, postcolonial and global south studies. 

Dah Sié holds a master of letters in paralitterature. In his master thesis, he worked on the questions or murders and the writing of the détective novel in the texts by Jean-Pierre Tardivel. Dah is currently a Ph.D. candidate and forms part of the research group in analysis and literary theory (Grathel) of the department Letter of the University FHB-Abidjan. For his doctoral thesis, he is currently researching on the Ivoran detective novel and the dynamics of a literary genre. Dah's research interests are among others literary history, literary genre and the questions of murders.

Carina Stickel is a PhD student at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. She holds a state examination in French and History. In her PhD thesis she investigates „Formen der pikaresken Subjektartikulation in französischsprachiger Literatur Afrikas“. Her most recent publication is „« Recommencer à zéro ? »  L’écriture picaresque africaine d’expression française et le concept de décolonialité : l’exemple de William Sassine dans Le Zéhéros n’est pas n’importe qui“, in: Bodo, Bidy Cyprien / Samaké, Adama (2020): La théorie de la décolonialité. Sémantiques et pratiques textuelles, Academia, pp. 199–227. Her research interests are picaresque literature, contemporary francophone African literature, postcolonial studies, intersectionality.

Sara Vakili is holding two distinct, yet for her equally fascinating bachelors of Electronic engineering in Shiraz (Iran) and Fine Arts with major in painting at San Francisco State University. Then she moved to Tübingen to pursue her education in American studies with a focus on “Queer Art”. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Tübingen under Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies’ supervision and working as a co-coordinator of Erasmus Mundus Program Crossways in Cultural Narratives. Her ongoing project is “The Making of Queer Myth: St. Sebastian and Rumi in Queer Culture.” She has also been twice granted The Global South Scholarship for research stays at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. Her forthcoming publication is “Género y espacio en Te Prometo Anarquia (2015)” in the volume Cine y megalópolis. Aproximaciones a la ciudad latinoamericana desde el cine urbano. Her areas of interest range from Art History, Feminist Studies, Mythology, and Mysticism to Decoloniality and Global South studies. In her leisure time she is a calligrapher at Tübingen Town Hall for “Goldenes Buch”.

Vanessa Weihgold holds a Bachelor in Romance Studies and Psychology of Economics and a Master in Philosophy. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Universities of Tübingen and Aix/Marseille. Her project adresses the question: "Do ecological emotions show a cultural conflict?" Her research interests are Ecological Emotions, (Eco)Feminism, Critical Theory and Indigenous Philosophies.