Léa Gbeassor (she/her) is a teaching and research assistant at Prof. Dr. Michael C. Frank’s Chair of English Literatures of the 19^th and 20^th century.

She holds 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. She submitted her MA thesis called “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” in 2024.

Building on her MA thesis, she is currently working on her PhD project tentatively entitled “Energy Systems in Contemporary Afrofuturist Literature”. This dissertation project identifies energy systems as a key element of modern societies’ structures, which thus lend themselves to discuss and analyze cultural conceptions of the environment, (non-)humans, and technology. She is interested in examining the continuities of colonial mechanisms in the (ab)use of energy resources, visible for example in practices of extractivism. The focus of this project is on literary and cinematic productions that work with the genre of Afro- and Africanfuturism, which centers critical discussions around past and current issues concerning Black – and otherwise marginalized – people. Furthermore, in these times in which an energy transition is much needed, it is arguably helpful to turn to the speculative depiction of possible energy futures in Afrofuturist works.

To address these topics, Léa draws on the theories of Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and specifically the Energy Humanities.

• Postcolonialism
• Energy Humanities
• Ecocriticism & Blue Humanities
• Waste Studies
• Afrofuturism & Africanfuturism; speculative fiction more generally
• African and African-American literatures

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

 “‘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.

You are welcome to reach out to Léa Gbeassor via email at lea.gbeassor@es.uzh.ch.