Dr Dima Barakat Chami

I joined the University of Bristol in 2021 as Research Associate on the ERC-funded Literary Activism in sub-Saharan Africa: Commons, Publics and Networks of Practice (LITCOM) working alongside Prof Madhu Krishnan where I manage the Nigerian strand of the project. As part of my role, I research literary activism in the North of Nigeria, with a focus on Hausa literary and print cultures. I am particularly interested in the ways literary collectives, literary festival and events curators, magazines, newspapers, writers, authors and readers based in the North of Nigeria produce and engage with literature and the literary scene in their communities. I am committed to collaborative and impatcful work and as part of this project I aim to co-produce research and knowledge with partners and colleagues from the North of Nigeria and make this accessible. 

I was previously based at the University of Leeds where I completed my PhD then held a postdoc at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Insitute. My doctoral research examined the intersections between human rights law, migration studies and African literature as they pertained to the contested notion of the human both in law and politics. My research interests have since grown to encompass the links between literature and literary activism, policy change and direct action in the context of migration legislation and politics. I am hoping to build these interests onto my doctoral thesis and publish this work as a monograph.