Englisches Seminar

Junior Professor Dr. Jacky Kosgei

Jacky Kosgei teaches African Literary and Cultural Studies in the Englisches Seminar. Her research is interdisciplinary in nature, located at the borders of literary and cultural studies, history, and anthropology. One of her preoccupations is oral history, where she uses hitherto unrecorded versions of history to challenge and subvert but also to expand and complement the existing archive of historical knowledge. She also focuses on marine ecosystems and oceanic lifeworlds, from a sociological and literary perspective – probing how indigenous knowledges of the sea capture changes in the ocean, and exploring how indigenous knowledges carried in local art forms aid marine conservation. Using knowledge gained from interviews with seafarers, Jacky Kosgei’s research has shifted analyses of the sea from surface to depth in line with recent trends in oceanic studies.

Administration

Coordinator: Mzee Suleimann Nyembwe Visiting Chair of African and Diasporic Literary and Cultural Studies (DAAD funded)

Co-convener: BA (Minor) African Literary and Cultural Studies

Since October 2024 – Associate Member of the Indian Ocean World Centre hosted at McGill University. https://indianoceanworldcentre.com/members/

Since 2024 – Member of the steering committee of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies (ICGSS), University of Tübingen https://uni-tuebingen.de/forschung/zentren-und-institute/interdisciplinary-centre-for-global-south-studies/about-us/

Board Member, Mashariki (Eastern African) Literary and Cultural Studies Conference Series

Teaching

Teaching at the University of Tübingen

(from January 2023) at Bachelors and Masters level:

Jacky Kosgei teaches courses in Comparative African Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Diasporic Literature, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Indian Ocean Literature, Oral Literature, Popular Literature, & Abolitionist Literature.

These areas of teaching are informed by her research interests. 

She has supervised several Bachelors (B.A., B.Ed.) and Masters (MA) theses on these fields of research, and she currently (co) supervises five PhD dissertations on topics related to her teaching and research activities at the University of Tübingen.

Previous Teaching

Department of African Literature, University of the Witwatersrand

January-June 2022

January-June 2021

Department of English Studies, Stellenbosch University

June-December 2020

Publications

Recent Publications

  1. Riccarda Flemmer, Bani Gill, Jacky Kosgei, editors. Proximity as Method: Concepts for Coexistence in the Global Past and Present. Routledge, 2024
  2. ‘Reading Yvonne Owuor’s Political and Ecocritical Projects through Sino-African Relations in The Dragonfly Sea.’ In Entanglements and Ambivalences: Africa and China Encounters in Media and Culture, edited by Hongwei Bao and Daniel Mutibwa, Routledge, 2025, pp. 85–98.
  3. Riccarda Flemmer, Bani Gill, Dorothee Kimmich, Jacky Kosgei and Russell West-Pavlov. ‘Introduction: Proximity as Method: Concepts for Coexistence in the Global Past and Present.’ In Proximity as Method: Concepts for Coexistence in the Global Past and Present, edited by Riccarda Flemmer, Bani Gill & Jacky Kosgei. Routledge, 2024, pp. 1–17.
  4. Keyvan Allahyari, Jacky Kosgei, Pavan Malreddy, AbdouMaliq Simone & Russell West-Pavlov. ‘Homo Proximus: The Migrant Experience – Negotiating Proximities.’ In Proximity as Method: Concepts for Coexistence in the Global Past and Present, edited by Riccarda Flemmer, Bani Gill & Jacky Kosgei. Routledge, 2024, pp. 118–129.
  5. ‘“Bahari Imekufa, The Sea is Dead”: Local perceptions of ocean health and ocean wealth among fishers on the Kenyan coast.’ Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1, 2024: 20–31. DOI - 10.1080/23277408.2024.2304421.
  6. Strand, M., G. Retter, M. Khan, A. Frid, M.Hudson, K. Leonard, K. Paul, C. Baron-Aguilar, R. Boswell, A. Cisneros-Montemayor, A. E. Copenhaver, Y. Costa, L. Hiwasaki, N. J. R. Jones, B. P. Kelly, J. Kosgei, V. K. Metcalf, A. Moshani, G. Y. Oduro, C. P. Scott, and V. Rakotondrazafy. 2024. Co-producing Sustainable Ocean Plans with Indigenous and traditional knowledge holders. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. Available online at https://oceanpanel.org/publication/indigenous-knowledge/
  7. Lisa Hiwasaki, Maui Hudson, Jacky Kosgei, Mia Strand and Micheline Khan. December 3, 2024. Indigenous Knowledge is Key to Better Ocean Management. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. Available online at https://www.wri.org/insights/indigenous-knowledge-informs-ocean-policies

Editing and Reviewing

Editor and Reviewer, Marimba Publications

Reviewer, Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies (EALCS)

Talks and Conferences

Talks, Panel discussions, Symposia, Seminars and Workshops

Upcoming. The 204th Nobel Symposium in Literature: Retrieving Pasts, Imagining Futures: Creative Forms in African Writing. Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS), Stellenbosch, 3-7 November 2025. Organised by Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. 

2025. Black History Month Event Drawing Lines: A student theatre project. 7-9 February, Fichtehaus (Herrenbergerstrasse 40, 72070). Co-organised with Prof. Ursula Offenberger, Methods Centre, University of Tübingen, and coordinated by the ZGD. 

2024. Lecture. ‘Decanonisation Research Methodologies: Working with oral, non-Europhone texts.’ Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University. 3 July. 

2024. 36th Swahili Colloquium, Bayreuth University, 17–19 May. Panel Discussion: ‘Decolonizing the Mind: A Conversation with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Abdilatif Abdalla, and Jacky Kosgei.’ 17 May.

2024. Lecture. ‘Notes on the Abolition of “the African Slave Trade” by European Crusaders,’ a part of the Schreiben und Forschen über Grenzen und Unterschiede: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Writing and Researching about Borders and Differences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives), Organised by Zentrum für Gender- und Diversitätsforschung (Centre for Gender and Diversity Research), University of Tübingen. 2 May.

2024. Panel Discussion. ‘Listening as a Tool for Translating and Mediating Difference / Zuhören als Werkzeug zum Übersetzen und Vermitteln von Unterschieden.’ Akademie für Darstellende Kunst (ADK / Academy of Performing Arts) Baden-Württemberg, Ludwigsburg, 26 April.

2024. Co-convener (with Dr. Hongwei Bao, University of Nottingham, UK): Towards Global Ways of Knowing: Indian Ocean Epistemologies Workshop. University of Tübingen, 21–22 March & Nottingham University, 6–7 June.

2024. Workshop delivered to participants of the 2024 Spring School at University of Tübingen on 11 April. ‘Orality and Translation in Literary Studies.’ 

2024. Invited talk. ‘Ungrievable Lives and Water Hauntologies: Navigating inhospitable waters of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.’ Science Notes Project, Kino Atelier, Tübingen, 14 March.

2023. Water as Method Expert workshop. Bonn University, 18 July.

2023. ‘Inherited Diasporic identities’, a Think piece delivered on the panel ‘The Migrant Experience – Negotiating Proximities’ in the North-South Encounters Summer School at University of Tübingen, 10–14 July.

2023. *Afrikanist*innentag 2023: Im/material heritage recalibrated* Institute of African Studies, Leipzig University, 4 – 6 May 2023. Paper presented “Two Calabashes of Palm Wine and The Gospel: Rewriting Encounters between Christian Missionaries and Host Communities on the Kenyan Coast in the 19th Century.”

2023. British Institute in East Africa (BIEA) Annual Conference, Nairobi. 22-24 February. ‘The Sea is Dead: Changing Sea Ecologies in View of Climate Change.’

International Conferences

Upcoming. 2025. Co-convener (with Prof. Clarissa Vierke, Bayreuth University), East African Ecological Epistemologies panel for the Mashariki East African Literary and Cultural Studies conference. Paper to be presented: ‘Mapping and Naming the Sea: Digo Placenames and a Co-ordinated Sea.’ University of Dar es salaam, 21-23 August.

2024. 36th Swahili Colloquium, Bayreuth University, 17–19 May. Opening Lecture: ‘Translating Experiential and Embodied Knowledges anchored in Swahili Linguistic Practices.’ 17 May.

2023. Mashariki (East African) Literary and Cultural Studies Conference, Makerere University, Kampala, 24–26 August. Paper presented: ‘Water Politics and Poetics and the Precarity of Empire in River Spirit by Leila Aboulela.’