Research

My Spiel

Naija Lit to the World: African Stories, Global Impact

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

That’s Chinua Achebe famous quote.
And today, I am the lion’s historian.

The lion, in this case, is Nigeria.

As a public humanist and African literary historian, I study how 21st-century African writing is transforming global culture — and why we must rethink how the history of Nigerian literature is represented, taught, and valued worldwide.

For decades, Nigerian literature was expected to look and sound a certain way — rural villages, colonial legacies, and suffering that proved authenticity.

But today’s writers are doing something radical: they are remixing the global imagination — one tweet, one experimental novel, one Instagram poetry, one animation, one comic at a time

Through social media analysis, cultural mapping, and interviews, I analyze not just the texts, but the ecosystems around them: digital publishers, book influencers, literary festivals, museums, public programs that make Naija Lit thrive.

The discoveries I make in my research about 21^st century African storytelling are best captured by these three words: digitality — the space it lives in, global connection — the audience it reaches, and local realities — the roots it never forgets.

(Softer, reflective tone.)
Because a lion moves in family groups — the pride — I extend these insights beyond Nigeria.
This is about West Africa, the wider African continent, Black America — indeed, everywhere the light touches, and by light, I mean Black bodies, and that is quite literally the world.
That’s why I call my work Naija Lit to the World.

And here is why Naija Lit to the World matters: To change how the literature of a people is seen and documented in history books is to make room for new ways of thinking, creating, and imagining justice.

In the end, the future of literature isn’t just about who gets published — it’s about who gets heard.

Nigerian creatives have always spoken. It is my job to make sure the world is actually listening.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “From Third-Generation Nigerian Literature in English to the Twenty-First Century.” Research in African Literatures, volume 54 no. 3, 2024, p. 147-165.
Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “21st-century Digital Techno-cultural Trends in Nigeria and the Pseudoism of Globalization in Africa,” Espergesia, 8 (2), 15–31, 2021. https://doi.org/10.18050/rev.espergesia.v8i2.843.
Oluwafunmilayo. “An Overview of Yoruba Oral Literature, its Viability as a Source of Historical Data and its Contribution to Modern Nigerian Historiography,” African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research (AJSSHR), volume 3, Issue 6, October 2020 (pp. 1-24).

Book Chapters

Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo, Linda Silim Moundene, Ethel Mambo, Doris Kakuru, and Nadia Ncube. “Untold Stories of African Girlhoods: An Open Letter in Parts.” African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development. Gender, Development and Social Change, edited by Catherine Cymone Fourshey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. In press.
Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “HBO’s Stolen Daughters: Interrogating the State’s Unhealthy Culture of Silence and Erasure in Seeking Redress for Boko Haram’s Sexual Victims.” Covid-19 Lockdown and Sexual Gender Based Violence Against Schoolgirls in Africa: A Critical Feminist Analysis, edited by Anne Kubai, forthcoming.
Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo, Salawu, Olajide. “Audience Network: The Postcolonial Yorùbá Dramatic Visual Public.” Network of Yoruba Print Culture, edited volume by Shola Adenekan, forthcoming.
Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “Nigeria’s Insta Poetry: Cultivating Inward, Ideological Activism, Revitalizing African Orality and Re-defining the Art of Poetry.” ALT 42: Oral and Written African Poetry and Poetics, edited by Ernest Emenyonu, Boydell & Brewer, 2024, pages 21-36.

Book Review:

Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “Colonial Legacies in Francophone African Literature: The School and the Invention of the Bourgeoisie,” by Mohamed Kamara. Journal of the African Literature Association, 2024 https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2024.2441007.

Semi-Academic Essays

Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “UA Museums and the First Year Writing Program: A Model for Experiential Learning,” UA Museum Chronicle, Issue #65, 34-35, 2025.
• Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “Collector/Collected: A Reflection on Paul R. Jones’ Postures of Legacy,” Paul R. Jones Museum Newsletter, Issue #1, 2025.
Akinpelu, Oluwafunmilayo. “Problematizing Media Representations of Climate Change in Africa and Proposing ‘Worlding’ as a Solution,” The Activist, Central European University’s Human RightS Initiative (HRSI) Journal, Issue 17, 18-21, July 2020.
Featured writer of multiple essays in The Collegian, Barefield’s College of Arts and Sciences (BCAS) magazine.

Research Statement

My research reimagines historiographies of global black anglophone literatures with a particular emphasis on contemporary works and new media. Specifically, I am interested in the messages, mediums, and modalities of storytelling practices that appear among global Black creative communities in countries across the Black diaspora. In this way, my work intersects the fields of global Black literatures and African American literary studies, Afro-Asian pop cultural studies, postcolonial studies and cultural and new media studies. My work also engages with gender and sexuality studies. I have also earned a certificate in Museum Studies, reflecting my work in public humanities as a curator and creator of new media art forms. Thus, I not only theorize about new media and its role in developing global black anglophone literatures, but I also am a practitioner.

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