Chalo ua Waya
- PhD student
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About
Chalo ũa Waya is reading for a PhD in English and Comparative Literature. He is part of the Cambridge team in the pan-European CAPONEU research consortium of universities. Chalo is being co-supervised by Professors Sarah Colvin (Faculty of Modern and Mediaeval Languages) and Christopher Warnes (Faculty of English). He is working on a thesis provisionally entitled, Pluralising globality: critical Afropolitanism as epistemic self-assertion. His research is a comparative study on Sharon Dodua Otoo's Adas Raum, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, Natasha Brown's Assembly, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's Esse Cabelo, Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'Atlantique, and Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio’s Hija del Camino. Among other things, the study aims to produce a theoretical framework that will combine the relatively new praxes of critical Afropolitanism and epistemic justice.
His joint honours bachelor’s degree, issued by the University of Nairobi, is in Politics and French with a minor in Literature in English. He holds a master’s degree in Kiswahili—also from the University of Nairobi. At the Sorbonne in Paris, Chalo earned a master’s degree in French. He then earned a terminal research master’s degree in journalism from Canada’s oldest and best journalism programme—at Carleton University. Chalo then earned an MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures from the University of Cambridge. He has worked as a journalist and editor for the BBC and China Media Group, among others. Chalo holds a licence from the District of Columbia State Board of Education in the US to teach English, English as a Second Language, and French at primary and secondary school levels. He has taught English, French and Kiswahili in five continents and seven countries.
Publications and media:
Afropolitanism and "Ada’s Realm": A conversation with Sharon Dodua Otoo
The Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe (CAPONEU) consortium biography