Dr Bonaventure Munganga
PhD English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney)
MA Literay Stylistics (U. of Birmingham-UK)
BA English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo)
I hold a BA in English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo), an MA in Literary Stylistics (University of Birmingham-UK), and a PhD in English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney). I am also an alumnus of the 2019 Harvard Institute for World Literature session and my primary and broad research interests span Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism, Aesthetics and Politics, and Literature and Philosophy. More specifically, I am interested in African and Afro-diasporic Literature, Comparative Black and Indigeno...
- Publications
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
Global Seed Fund to set up an international multidisciplinary collaborative research network among researchers from UNSW-Sydney (Australia), KU Leuven (Belgium), Université de Lubumbashi and Université de Kisangani (DR Congo) in preparation for research grant applications in energy humanities, worth €49K (January-December 2025).
British Academy ODA Challenge-Oriented Research Grant on Power and Voice in Climate Change (June 2024-December 2026). Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC, ref # IOCRG\101313 (£147,298.13), joint with Sarah Arens (University of Liverpool), Nicola Thomas (University of Lancaster), Blake Ewing (University of Nottingham) and Emery Mudinga (ISDR/Bukavu).
UNSW ADA Innovation Hub Creative Confidence Annual $1.5K p.a grants (2021-2022).
Balzan Colloquium fully funded scholarship for the 2025 Institute for World Literature session, Harvard University
UNSW Scientia PhD Scholarship, AU$52K p.a. + full tuition fee, 2018-2023
Birmingham International Scholarship, £10,000 p.a. 2013-2014.
All-Saints Overseas Scholarship, £12,500 p.a, 2013-2014
US Fulbright Scholarship for an MA in TESOL (declined), 2012
I am currently working on two projects, including:
1. Localising the Anthropocene: Reconceptualising Time, Place, and Knowledge for local meanings of and response to Climate Change, Environmental Protection and justice in the Congo Tropical Forest region
This project focuses on climate fiction from countries across the Congo Basin forest to unpack how time, place, knowledge and their entailments of humans and nonhumans entanglements are conceptualised, as well as implications for the local meanings of the Anthropocene, climate change, environmental protection, justice, and policies. Part of this project has attracted funding from the British Academy, for a joint project titled “Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC”, hosted by the University of Liverpool” (Award of £ 147,298.13, Reference: IOCRG\101313). Under this joint project, my work will investigate the cultural memory of climate change, land and land rights in the Eastern Congo in oral and narratives from diverse sources, including the Liaspo-The Congolese Tales audio archives at Manchester Central Library.
2. Black Memories and Epistemologies: The Poetics of Cosmopolitan Identity in Afro-Diasporic Arts and Media
This project studies how contemporary Afro-Diasporic Arts and Media epitomise black memories and epistemologies as the writers’ negotiation of a black identity in a cosmopolitan locatedness. The history of Africans’ “emigration directly or indirectly precipitated the emergence of a new wave of African writings with diasporic leanings. There is also a transgenerational dynamic to this history, as some of the émigrés fed with their children, who later came of age in the West but still maintained various forms of affiliations and attachments to Africa” (Adebayo 2023, 74). African affiliations and attachments are enacted in black memories and epistemologies, which interface and intermesh with issues of race, gender, ecology, and identity. Black memory, as used here, is encompassing, following literature Nobel Prize laureate, Abdulrazak Gurnah (2023)’s view of memory in literature as the writer’s hinterland, the source materials, the place where the writer goes to check the plausibility of certain notions and ideas, the writer’s experience of events, the stories s/he has heard about other people or places, or news and histories s/he has read about, or dreams and imaginings that thrilled or baffled him/her. This project construes black memories and epistemologies as both resisting Black fungibility and disintegration, while at the same time copyrighting black cultural authorship in world Arts and Media.