Dr Terri Ochiagha is a literary critic and cultural historian and a world-leading expert on the work of the ‘father of modern African Literature’, Chinua Achebe. She also works on the history and literary representations of elite colonial education in British Africa. She holds a B.A., M.A., and PhD in English from Complutense University, Madrid. Her first book, ACHEBE AND FRIENDS AT UMUAHIA: The Making of a Literary Elite (2015) won the African Studies Association of the UK’s inaugural Fage&Oliver Prize for the most outstanding book on Africa published in 2014-2015. She is also the author of A SHORT HISTORY OF CHINUA ACHEBE'S THINGS FALL APART (2018). She is finishing her third book, AFFECTIVE STATES AND ARCHIVAL EXCESS: Nigeria Magazine and the Politics of Self-Monumentality, and is about to begin work on the definite biography of Chinua Achebe.
Dr Ochiagha’s academic career in the UK began with the award of a prestigious British Academy Newton International Fellowship, which recruits the best postdoctoral researchers across all relevant disciplines from around the world. She has held positions in various UK universities, including King’s College London, where she was a Teaching Fellow in the History of Modern Africa, and the University of Oxford, where she has—at various times—been a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College, Visiting Researcher at the African Studies Centre, and tutor in Postcolonial African Literatures at Wycliffe Hall.
Dr Ochiagha is currently a Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literatures at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches Literary Theory, English Literature across the 16th-21st centuries, and her own specialist course, ‘Education and Empire’.
Dr Ochiagha’s academic career in the UK began with the award of a prestigious British Academy Newton International Fellowship, which recruits the best postdoctoral researchers across all relevant disciplines from around the world. She has held positions in various UK universities, including King’s College London, where she was a Teaching Fellow in the History of Modern Africa, and the University of Oxford, where she has—at various times—been a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College, Visiting Researcher at the African Studies Centre, and tutor in Postcolonial African Literatures at Wycliffe Hall.
Dr Ochiagha is currently a Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literatures at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches Literary Theory, English Literature across the 16th-21st centuries, and her own specialist course, ‘Education and Empire’.