Meet the visiting fellows!

The ASCL has a vibrant Visiting Fellows Programme. Selected fellows work together with ASCL colleagues, make use of the excellent African Library, and give a seminar in the context of the Collaborative Research Group they work with while at the ASCL. Learn more about our current three visiting fellows: Edwin Asa Adjei, Twasiima Bigirwa, and Jane Akinyi Ngala Oduor.

Edwin Asa Adjei is a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. His research focuses on interrogating African literature (oral and written). At the ASCL, Edwin is engaged in the examination of gendered economic violence as a central, yet underexplored theme in contemporary African young adult fiction. Focus is on the genre’s potential to illuminate how young people experience, interpret, and negotiate structural violence from within their everyday lives.
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Twasiima Bigirwa is a storyteller, poet and artist. Twasiima is the author of three collections of poems: ebyeshongoro bya Debra (songs of Debra), okwetonganira kwa Stefie (Stefie’s speech) and ebirooto bya Josie (Josie’s dream). Her latest book The Weavings of Life is a collection of stories based in and around the lives of contemporary Ugandan women. During her fellowship at the ASCL, she will be working on her first novel; a historical fiction that merges East African mythologies and cosmologies to create an epic tale. Read more
 

Jane Akinyi Ngala Oduor is an associate professor of linguistics at The University of Nairobi. Her research interests are in phonology, phonetics and language documentation as well as the interfaces between pragmatics and the phonology of African languages. She also has an interest in African sociolinguistics, especially, multilingualism and language policy issues in education as well as language teaching. During her fellowship at the ASCL, she will be working on ‘A Preliminary Documentation of the Language of Preserving, Cooking, Serving and Eating Fish among the Luo of Kenya’. Read more

 
 
Posted on 2 October 2026, last modified on 2 October 2026