Postcolonial research group
The Postcolonial Research Group (PRG) is an inclusive group of scholars, both established and emerging, whose work covers a wide range of topics relating to the globalised present as well as the colonial past – from the continued reckoning with colonialism’s legacies around the globe to the new cultural creations and energies that are shaping decolonial futures for us all.
The group is the latest iteration in a long and rich history of Anglophone postcolonial studies at the University of Leeds, beginning with the establishment of Commonwealth literary studies in the 1960s. Two of Africa’s most distinguished writers, the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka and the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o, are alumni of the School. Many of today’s renowned postcolonial scholars around the world have been members of the group at Leeds, as either PhD students or when pursuing our MA in Postcolonial Studies (the oldest of its kind in the world). The group prides itself in engaging with new, cutting-edge research in the field and supporting the latest generation of postcolonial researchers.
At Leeds we have a vibrant community of postgraduate research students from across the world whose interests collectively span the cultural, historical and geographical concerns of the postcolonial field. We offer supervision across the full range of specialisms: recent PhD projects have concerned life writing after Empire, animist poetics in African literature, transnational black feminism, and environmentalist writing in multicultural Britain. Find out more about our postgraduate research offering on the research degree pages.
Research areas
Current postcolonial research activities and endeavours by colleagues include:
- postcolonialism and environmentalism
- literature, terror, and counterterrorism
- stateless migration, refugees and asylum
- postcolonial perceptions of care
- transcultural adoption and the global childcare economy
- wellbeing and mental health
- world Englishes, sociolinguistics and empire
- posthumanism
- the psychologies of colonial and postcolonial governance.
- the ‘good immigrant’ in contemporary culture
Events
We currently hold at least two PRG events per semester, which are primarily designed for its members but are open to all, including staff and students from elsewhere in the university, from other universities, and from other School-based research groups (where possible, we make these accessible online as ‘hybrid’ sessions). These usually include 'inward-facing' professionalization workshops, designed to provide insight into professional requirements and opportunities for Leeds-based postgraduate students and early career researchers, and ‘outward-facing’ workshops involving visiting speakers.
We also liaise with cross-disciplinary centres such as the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS), the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (ICPS), and the Centre for World Literatures, and in conjunction with these and various regional and national bodies (e.g. the Postcolonial Studies Association [PSA]).
Members
The following members of academic staff are involved in the Postcolonial Research Group: