Dr. phil. Oluwadunni Talabi (Wiss. Mitarbeiterin)

Research and Teaching

• Black feminist and Transnational queer feminist studies
• North American and Postcolonial literatures and cultures
• Literatures of the Black commons
• Critical race studies and analysis of structures
• Critical future studies and Posthumanism
• Feminist literary theory and Gender studies

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:

• 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: A Black Feminist Analysis of Power and Oppression in Contemporary African diasporic Women's Writing." Transcript [Forthcoming]

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. "Afro-Europe Sex Work Pipeline and the Satirical Disruption of Reductive Binaries in Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street." Matatu [Forthcoming]

2025. "Queering Postcolonial Worlds: An Introduction." 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]

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 Unity: Tracing Transnational Black Identities and Class Fractures 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.