• Postcolonialism 

• Energy Humanities 

• African and African-American literatures 

• Afrofuturism & Africanfuturism; speculative fiction more generally 

• Ecocriticism & Blue Humanities 

• Waste Studies 

I am a teaching and research assistant at Prof. Dr. Michael C. Frank’s Chair of English Literatures of the 19th and 20th century. I hold a BA, as well as an MA in English Literature und Linguistics, as well as in French Literature and Linguistics from the University of Zurich.  

Building on my MA thesis, entitled “A World Fueled by Oil and Data – Old and New Forms of Extractivism in Nnedi Okorafor's "Spider the Artist", "The Popular Mechanic" and the movie Neptune Frost,” I am currently working on my PhD project tentatively entitled “Imagining the Energy Transition through Afrofuturist Literature”. This dissertation project focuses on how Afrofuturist works from different media imagine an urgently needed transition away from fossil fuels towards more sustainable energy sources. Specifically, I am interested in the speculative elements as an important tool to imagine positive energy transitions, as well as critique negative developments. Part of such negative developments are colonial and capitalist continuities disguised as ‘green practices’ – something we currently see in digitalization processes or wind development projects in Oaxaca, Mexico, for example. To address these topics, I ground my analysis within the field of Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and specifically the Energy Humanities.  

“‘Data as the New Oil’: Extractivism in Neptune Frost (2021).” Matatu, vol. 55, 2024, pp. 1-29.  

“‘Data as the New Oil’: Resource Extraction and Digital Infrastructures in the Afrofuturist Film Neptune Frost (2021)”. GAPS conference on “Post/Colonial Environments”. University of Zurich, May 9-11, 2024.  

Introduction to Kona Khasu’s talk at the event series ‘Literaturmittag’, organized by Stiftung Litar, given together with Dr. Martin Mühlheim. Zürich, October 19, 2021. 

I am currently teaching a seminar in English Literature: Textual Analysis.