Visiting fellows at the ASCL

The ASCL has a vibrant Visiting Fellows Programme. Selected fellows collaborate and network with colleagues, make use of our excellent 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: Girma Negash, Gloria Okeke, and Aurore Vermylen. 

Girma Negash is an Associate Professor of History and former Head of the Department of History (2019- Sept. 2023) at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He has been an educator all his life, with research interests ranging from history education, textbook research, to labour history and economic history. During his fellowship at the ASCL, he intends to develop a book proposal on teaching a common past/history to pupils in secondary schools in plural/multi-ethnic states – a subject not unique to Ethiopia but an issue several other states in Sub-Saharan Africa are grappling with. 'It has become increasingly contentious to develop a common curriculum and teach a national history in such countries owing to the multiple divides, legacies of internal conflict, and not less so contending historiographies', Girma explains. He  gave a talk about his research during a CRG Symposium on 11 June, titled 'Rethinking History Education in Ethiopia: Bridging Divergent Narratives through the National', in which he shared his insights about past challenges and future prospects of history teaching in Ethiopian secondary schools.

Girma is affilated to the CRG Conflict Continuities.

The research of Gloria Okeke focuses on how meaning is derived from the sculpture Seed Yams of Our Land by Nigerian artist Ozioma Onuzulike. This sculpture, a majestic art project, explores yam – a sacred food crop for various ethnic groups in Nigeria and beyond – as a metaphor for the human condition in Africa. The artist has crafted yam tubers from fired clay, each yam meticulously modelled by hand.
'I see the artwork as a non-verbal metaphor, communicating the state of the Nigerian youths', Gloria says. 'My interest is how Igbo native speakers will from their rich cultural background knowledge of yam, arrive at various interpretations of the sculpture. So, I am looking at the interplay between new information (presented through the sculpture) and encyclopedic information (derived from rich cultural experiences) in meaning construction within the artwork.'
Gloria is an Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Linguistics, Igbo, and Other Nigerian Languages at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Here, she also earned her BA and MA degrees in Linguistics, a well as her PhD in Applied Linguistics. 

Gloria is affiliated to the CRG African Languages Archives.

Aurore Vermylen's research interests focus on memory, the everyday experience of violence, and war narratives. Aurore holds a PhD in Anthropology from UCLouvain. Her dissertation, titled 'Réfugiés à recruter. Le camp comme anti-chambre des mains d'œuvre (issues) de la guerre. Région des Grands Lacs en Afrique, Amérique du Nord, Globalisation' examined refugee camps and conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. 
In September 2025, she will begin a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowship titled 'Echoing Wars'. This project explores war narratives within a globally dispersed community - the Banyamulenge - both in the Great Lakes Region and in North America. 'One of the dimensions I will research is how narratives about the war in DRC vary among the dispersed community, from the rural area back home to the "new home" cities in the USA.' As part of this fellowship, she will be based at both the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and UCLouvain.
During her fellowship at the ASCL, Aurore will concentrate on publishing her PhD dissertation in the Collection Afrique(s) of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) and on writing an article for Ethnopolitics.

Aurore is affiliated to the CRG Conflict Continuities.