Welcoming Dr Obari Gomba, TORCH / All Souls Global South Visiting Fellow, 2021
TORCH is honoured to welcome Dr Obari Gomba as the 2021 Global South Visiting Fellow.
The Global South Visiting Fellowship and Professorship Programme was created in 2015, and is generously supported by All Souls College.
Dr Obari Gomba is an award-winning poet and writer, and his research is at the forefront of recent developments in eco-criticism and energy humanities. Dr Gomba is currently a lecturer at the Unviersity of Harcourt, Nigeria. His works include Guerrilla Post (Winner of ANA Drama Prize 2018/ Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2018), For Every Homeland (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2017/ Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2017), Thunder Protocol (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2016), Length of Eyes (Shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in 2013 /Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2013), and Pearls of the Mangrove (adopted as a ‘Book of the Festival’ for the 2011 Garden City Literary Festival and the 2019 Festival Poetry Calabar). He curated an anthology featuring 35 writers from 33 countries, entitled A Piece of Daily Life, for the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa (USA) in 2016. Please click here to read more about Dr Gomba's research.
Dr Gomba is being hosted by Professor David Pratten, and will take up his Fellowship at All Souls College in Michaelmas term, 2021.
Professor Pratten comments, "We eagerly anticipate Dr Obari Gomba’s Global South Fellowship at Oxford. He is a distinguished literary scholar and writer who is at the forefront of contemporary ‘eco-criticism’. As one of the leading literary commentators on the politics of oil in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria he is a key partner and participant in an ongoing collaborative research programme between Oxford University and the University of Port Harcourt called ‘The Arts of Oil: A cultural history of Port Harcourt’. Dr Gomba’s visit will enable him to consult archival sources, and to share insights on the works of Niger Delta poets and playwrights."
The TORCH Global South Visiting Professorships and Fellowships Programme is designed to bring world-leading figures to the University of Oxford for at least one term and be included in the teaching and research environment, hosted by leading academics in the humanities. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Programme is a collaboration between the Faculties of the Humanities Division and All Souls College of the University of Oxford.
Previous Global South Visiting Professors and Fellows to TORCH have included Eduardo Lalo, Professor Supriya Chaudhuri, Nur Laiq, and Analía Gerbaudo.
