The Nigerian author, journalist & academic Nduka Otiono has been appointed the new Director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, starting from July 2022. He will hold the position for the next three years.

Dr Otiono, whose work spans academic essays as well as collections of short stories and poetry, joined the faculty in 2014 as an Assistant Professor, a pioneering appointee in the then newly-founded African Studies Institute. He is the first Director appointed from within the institute.

Nduka embraces this expanded role, remarking on his vision for the Institute:

Recognizing that this is our home department and the intellectual and cultural hub for the study of Africa in Canada is essential to my vision for the Institute. I count on our great local and international community and partners for the necessary cooperation and support to advance the Institute in its second decade of existence–having been founded in 2009.

Dr Nduka Otiono holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English and an MA in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, (1987) and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta, Canada (2011). He is a distinguished academic with fellowships from US and Canadian universities and honors ranging the F.S Chia Fellowship, Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize, and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship.

He is the author of the short story collection The Night Hides with a Knife, which won the ANA/Spectrum Prize; the poetry collection Voices in the Rainbow shortlisted for the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize; and Love in a Time of Nightmares for which he was awarded the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing. He has co-edited We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women (1998), and Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria (2006).

Go here for more details.

Congratulations to Dr Nduka Otiono!

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Photogaphy via Carleton Newsroom.