We are hiring!

The African Poetry Book Fund and African Poetry Digital Portal invite applications for two Postdoctoral Research Associate positions at Brown University beginning on September 1, 2025.

The Postdoctoral Research Associates would work closely with the project team developing the African Poetry Digital Portal Project, led by Kwame Dawes, Professor of Literary Arts and Principal Investigator of the project, and Lorna Dawes, Exploration and Research Librarian and co-Principal Investigator on the project, as well as the staff at the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University.

The project documents the work of African poets and provides equitable digital access to the related creative and intellectual artifacts, materials, and research on the subject of African Poetry that is housed in academic and cultural institutions in Africa and its diaspora.

The Postdoctoral Research Associates will be part of a stimulating scholarly environment in which they may pursue research, develop new interdisciplinary connections, teach courses, and network with others. This position fosters the academic careers of scholars who have recently received their PhD degrees by permitting them to pursue research while gaining mentored experience as scholars in African digital humanities. 

One Postdoctoral Research Associate will be involved in the oversight and continued development of African Poetry in the News section of the African Poetry Digital Portal and critical analysis of related news articles. We seek a scholar grounded in theoretical and critical literary studies with research interests in poetry across Africa and the diaspora. The scholar’s research should focus on the examination of the literary traditions, techniques, and themes within poetry from the African continent, with special attention paid to the unique elements of African oral traditions; African cultural practices; and the impact of slavery, colonialism, and post-colonization on poetic expression. The scholar’s research methods would rely on analyzing the works of prominent African poets and their evolving styles across different regions and time periods. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will each teach one course per year in Comparative Literature Department, English Department, and/or Literary Arts Department at Brown University.

One Postdoctoral Research Associate will be responsible for the oversight and management of the research work on the Index of Contemporary African Poets and the African Poetry Bibliographies. This involves developing lists of poets to expand the index by including poets of each past decade in manageable and relevant increments, completing biographical and bibliographical details of the poets, and recruiting and supervising a research team of scholars to carry out these research tasks. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will each teach one course per year in Comparative Literature Department, English Department, and/or Literary Arts Department at Brown University.

Knowledge of at least one of the following major languages would be helpful: Yoruba, Swahili, Khosa, French, Arabic, and/or Afrikaans.

We are accepting applications till Monday, 23 June 2025. Applications are accepted via Interfolio here.

Note: a previous version of this post advertised an additional postdoctoral position in African Digital Humanities. The APDP will be postponing the position. The search is now closed, but will open in the near future.