Christopher Ouma holds a Doctorate from the Department of African Literature at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Cape Town. His research and teaching interests include the broader field of contemporary African and African Diasporic literary and cultural production. He is interested in African popular culture, black print cultures particularly small magazines, literary journals and literary periodicals. He has held fellowships at the Open University, Milton Keynes London and University of the Johannesburg. He has co-edited The Spoken Word Project: Stories Travelling through Africa, and recently co-edited a special issue of The Black Scholar titled “After Madiba: Black Studies in South Africa.” He has published a number of books chapters as we as articles in Research in African Literatures, East African Literary and Cultural Studies, Matatu, Kunapipi amongst others. He is currently co-editor of the Journal Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies. He is currently finishing a monograph on the imagination of childhood in contemporary African and African Diasporic literature.

As the Mandela Fellow for Fall 2018, Dr. Ouma will work in the area of African Diasporic Literature.