Serving through 2028
James Ogude is the Director at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, a position he assumed in 2017, having been with the Centre since May 2013. He is an “A2” rated researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF). He has just concluded a five year project on the Southern African philosophical concept of Ubuntu funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. He is currently leading a Mellon funded supra-national project involving the Universities of Ghana, Makerere, Cape Town and Pretoria. He is also the Director of the African Observatory for Environmental Humanities located at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria.
Until his appointment to the Centre, he was a Professor of African Literature and Cultures in the School of Literature, Language and Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he worked since 1994, serving as the Head of African Literature and also Assistant Dean – Research, in the Faculty of Humanities.
His research interests include the broad area of African literature in English and Postcolonial theories, with a specific focus on issues of memory and reconstruction of African history and identities. More recently, his research focus has shifted to popular cultures and literature in Africa, in an attempt to understand how these cultures produced from below help us to understand issues of power and its uses on the continent. He is also working in the area of Black intellectual traditions.
He is the author of Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation (1999). He has edited a total of eight books and one anthology of African stories. His most recent edited books are: Ubuntu and Personhood (2018); Ubuntu and the Everyday (co-edited with Uni Dyer, 2019); Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community (2019). In addition, he has edited a number of books in literature and related areas and these include: Chinua Achebe’s Legacy: Illuminations from Africa (2015);Rethinking Eastern African Literary and Intellectual Landscapes (2012), and Urban Legends, Colonial Myths: Popular Culture and Literature in East Africa (2007). Ogude has published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals in the area of African Literature and Popular Culture in East Africa.