Dr. phil. Oluwadunni Talabi (Wiss. Mitarbeiterin)

Research and Teaching

• Black, Postcolonial, and Transnational Queer Feminist Studies
• Critical Analysis of Power Structures
• Critical Future Studies, Post/Alternative humanism, New Materialisms
• Literatures of the Black commons
• 15th to 19th C. American Transoceanic Literatures 
• World Building Literatures

Classes Offered

B.A. English-Speaking Cultures, University of Bremen:

• West African Women’s Literature (SOSE 2022)

M.A. English-Speaking Cultures: Language, Text, Media, University of Bremen:

• North American Maritime Narratives (WISE 2025/26)
• The Question of Freedom: Reading Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison (SOSE 2025)
• Postcolonial Studies: Histories, Theories, Key Concepts (WISE 2024/25)
• The Anthropocene and Contemporary Black Literature (SOSE 2024)
• Comparative African and African Diasporic Women and Queer Literature (WISE 2022/23)

Publications

Monograph

2025. "Woman, African, Other: Black Feminism and Intersectionality in the Contemporary Works of African Diasporic Women." Transcript [Forthcoming, June]

Journal Articles (Peer Reviewed)

2026. "Queer Black Feminist Self-Poetics in Toni Morrison's Sula." Am Lit [Forthcoming]

2025. "Gendered Collectivism and Colonial Capitalist Patriarchy: Exploitation of African Women in Buchi Emecheta's Novels." Gender Forum [Forthcoming]

2025. "The Afropean Sex Work Pipeline and the Satirical Disruption of Reductive Binaries in Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street." Matatu, 56(1), 152-171. https://doi.org/10.1163/18757421-05601007

2025. "Queering Postcolonial Worlds: An Introduction." with Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, and Corina Wieser-Cox. Gender Forum, 23(1): 1-11. https://journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/genderforum/article/view/3165/3279

2023. “Writing the Polyphonic African Queer Future: Reflections on Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater.” Journal of the African Literature Association, 17(2): 329-344.http://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2023.2228073

Edited Special Issues

2026. Special Issue Am Lit, "Envisioning Queer Racialized Self-Representations in the Americas."  Co-edited with Corina Wieser-Cox, Rita Maricocchi, and Dorit Neumann. [Forthcoming, 2026]

2025. Special Issue Gender Forum, "Queering Postcolonial Worlds." Co-edited with Rita Maricocchi, Dorit Neumann, and Corina Wieser-Cox

Grants & Fellowships

• Conference travel grant by European Consortium for Political Research (July 2024)
• Conference travel grants by Central Research development Fund, University of Bremen and Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V.
• Completion grant for doctoral studies, University of Bremen (June-Sept 2022)
• Travel grant by Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. for a research stay at the African American Studies Program, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA (Feb-April 2022)
• Further training grant by Evangelisches Studienwerk for Summer School Participation, Black Europe Summer School, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (June 2021)
• PhD fellowship by Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. (2019—2022)
• Grant for Intercultural Poetry Slam Community Project by Kompass International, University of Bremen (May 2019)

Conference Presentations

"Fragmented Solidarity: Black Queer Identities, Class Fractures, and Transnational Tensions in Kobby Ben Ben’s No One Dies Yet," Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), University of Bielefeld, Germany, 29-31 May 2025.

"Black Feminism and the Study of Water in the Anthropocene: Intersections and Points of Conflict," 6th Biennial EAAS Women's Network Symposium, Karlstad University, Sweden, 10-11 April 2025.

"Combahee River Collective and Black Feminist Critique of Western Biopolitics," 1st International Conference on Contradiction Studies, University of Bremen, Germany, 11-14 February 2025.

“Spectres of (De)Regulatory Practices in the Desirability of Black Natural Hair: Colonialism, Christianity, and Black Renaissance in Postcolonial Nigeria," 16th Annual Conference of the International Society for Cultural History, University of Potsdam, Germany, 04-06 Sept 2024.

"Black Feminist Encounters: On Walking the Talk, Risking the Self and Shifting Centres," European Conference on Politics and Gender, Ghent University, Belgium, 8-10 July 2024.

"Phallogocentric Disruptions of the Indigenous Yoruba Post-Human Environment in D.O. Fagunwa's The Forest of a Thousand Daemons (Translated by Wole Soyinka)," Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), University of Zurich, Switzerland, 9-11 May 2024.

"The Ogbanje Onto-Cosmology as Decolonial Somatechnics: A Diffractive Analysis of Wole Soyinka's Abiku, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater," The 23rd Annual Africa Conference, University of Texas at Austin, 4-7 April 2024.

"African Women on the Frontline: A HerStory of Racialized Essential Workers,” II International Conference of African Literatures, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain, 23-25 October 2023.

“Rethinking Oyewumi.” Roundtable Discussion at the Rethinking Decoloniality: African Decolonization and Epistemologies in the 21st Century 7th Annual LSA Conference, University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, 20-24 June 2023.

“Affect of Collectivism and Gendered Care Function in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen,” Strategies of Critique, Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, Toronto, Canada, 17-19 May 2023.

“Recipes for Colonial Undoing: Reading New Narratives of Indigenous (Un)gendered Realities in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater,” Annual Conference of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), Goethe-Universit?t Frankfürt, Germany, 26-29 May 2022.

“On Choice, Translocational Terminologies, and Geo-Political Parallelism – A Critical Analysis of the 2018 Interview between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Hilary Clinton,” Intellectuals Across Borders 2nd PIN Conference, Universit?t Münster, Germany, 5-6 September 2019.

Guest Lectures

“The Ogbanje is here to stay: Queer African Interventions to the Crisis of Ontology in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater” lecture series “Gender – Culture – Feminism” organized by Dr. Karin Esders, University of Bremen, 13 Dec. 2023 (confirmed).

“Research writing”, lecture series “Cross-Cultural Collaboration” organized by Mr. Ibukunolu Ajagunna, DAAD representative at the European Studies Department, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, June 2020.

Conference and Event Organization

• With Corina Wieser-Cox, Rita Maricocchi and Dorit Neumann. “Queering Postcolonial Worlds,” Postcolonial Narrations conference in cooperation with GAPS, Universit?t Bremen, 6-7 Oct. 2023.
• With Oluseun Tanimomo. “Black Bodies and the Normalization of Pain – A Conversation on Black Women and Reproductive Health and Screening of a Short Film titled A Thousand Needles,” in cooperation with English Speaking Cultures, Universit?t Bremen, Oct. 2019.
• With Oluseun Tanimomo. “Poetry Slam on Interculturalism and Diversity,” in cooperation with Kompass International, Universit?t Bremen, 16 May 2019.
• Co-organization of Nigerian scholars in Germany cultural participation at the International festival, Universit?t Duisburg-Essen, 1 June 2017.