Mayowa Ajibade (Nigeria)

Mayowa Ajibade
MSt in World Literatures in English

In May 2016, I graduated from Indiana University Bloomington, in the United States, with a BA (with High Distinction) in English and a minor in African American & African Diaspora Studies. Before Indiana, I attended boarding school in Nigeria (six Secondary School years at Olashore International School) and in England (two A-level years at Malvern College).

During my time at Oxford, which I largely dedicated to the study of African Literature-in-English, I wrote term essays on Wole Soyinka’s The Man Died (1972), Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014), and on the politics of anthologizing twenty-first century African writing (a case study of the Hay Festival Africa39 2014 anthology). In my dissertation, I examined a selection of twenty-first century fictional narratives about Lagos (mostly novels), in particular, Teju Cole’s novella, Every Day is for the Thief (2007, 2014).

Life After Ertegun House

After completing my M.St. in June 2017, I began my doctoral studies in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Broadly, my scholarly interests include Black diasporic/ Global black studies, African American literature, Postcolonial literature and theory, African Literature-in-English, and African cinema.