Dr Terri Ochiagha
Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literatures
- Department of English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Department of English
University of Edinburgh
50 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LH - City
- Post code
Background
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 elite colonial education in British Africa, and works in the interstices of literary studies, history, and postcolonial theory.
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 will shortly begin work on the definite biography of Chinua Achebe: A Life at the Crossroads, which is under contract with Princeton University Press.
Apart from her books, Dr Ochiagha has published consistently in prestigious academic journals, including The Lion and the Unicorn, History in Africa, Research in African Literatures, Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute,Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies, and the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. She sits on the Academic Committee of Edinburgh University Press.
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.
At the University of Edinburgh, she teaches Literary Theory, English Literature across the 16th-21st centuries, and her own specialist course, ‘Education and Empire’.
For all commercial publishing, film and media enquiries, and non-university speaking engagements please contact her agents at
NEWS (Updated on 19 April 2023)
Dr Ochiagha has just published the article "The return of African Antiquities and the Ambiguity of the 'Romantic' Colonial: Nigeria Magazine and the Benin and Ife Bronzes in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 24: 1 (2023)
Qualifications
BA, MA, PhD, Complutense University, Madrid
Postgraduate teaching
Dr Ochiagha is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Before coming to the University of Edinburgh, Dr Ochiagha taught at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, University of Birmingham, King's College London, and Royal Holloway, University of London. At the latter, she was awarded a Teaching Commendation for her work on de-exoticising the teaching of postcolonial literatures.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Dr Ochiagha would be interested in supervising students working on her research interests as outlined above.