October is shaping up to be a busy month for our Fellow Justine Feyereisen, who is finishing her two-year stay at the University of Oxford as part of her Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral fellowship. Justine had previously obtained a PhD in Languages, Literature and Translation Studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles and in French and Francophone Literature at the University of Grenoble. While in Oxford, she carried out a research project entitled “Poetics of Cosmopolitical Utopias: Challenging Borders with Literature” under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Reynolds (Faculty of English).

A new chapter is now opening for her at Ghent University, where she has been awarded a three-year FWO Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship.

These next few weeks Justine will be on the road for her many academic activities. In early October, she will give a talk – “Black Corpses Matter: The Atlantic Ghosts, a Cosmopoethical Utopia of Repair” – at the “Thanatic Ethics” workshop hosted by the Université de Montpellier. This workshop will be followed by an international conference at the Maison français d’Oxford in April 2022, co-convened by Justine.

Justine is also involved in a project with artist Elisa Moris Vai, whose exhibition “Catherine, Kiambé, Surya” will take place from October 15 to November 15 in Oxford, as part of the Photo Oxford 2021 festival. Besides being the exhibition’s scientific curator, Justine has also co-organised with Elisa Moris Vai the conference “Women, Memory and Transmission. Postcolonial Perspectives from the Arts & Literature” (18 October, Maison française d’Oxford, live streamed here).

Finally, Justine will fly to South Africa on the invitation of the University of Cape Town, where she will give a talk entitled “Écotone et utopie urbaine en Afrique subsaharienne: Mbanza, une afrotopie de Léonora Miano” at the international conference “Ecotones” (October 28-30, Cape Town).

The Wiener-Anspach Foundation wishes her the best for her academic future!