Room 106
James Wachira studied English Studies and Anglophone Literatures at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies, University of Bayreuth, obtaining his PhD in 2021. His research explores the Samburu of Kenya’s knowledges about grass in their oral traditions to engage with the politics of ecological conservation practices in Kenya. James has been a Postdoctoral student at the University of Nairobi where he has been coordinating VLIR-UOS TEAM project: Storytelling and Young People Coping with Crisis: Oral Narratives and Crisis Management in Kenya and Ethiopia. He is the recipient of the 2022 African-German Network of Excellence in Science (AGNES) grant. He has also served as an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi. James is also a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Afrika Focus.
As a postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, he will revise his monograph manuscript on Non*Human in Post-colonial Kenya Ecological Conservation NarRatings and finish writing a journal article on Mapping Ecological Crises in Selected Samburu of Kenya’s Ritual Chants.
Selected Publications
Wachira, James (2022). “Rethinking Agency in Kenyan Animal Conservations: Ng’ang’a Mbugua’s Terrorists of the Aberdare.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 34 (3): 294–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2022.2053505.
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Wachira, James (2020). “Wangari Maathai’s environmental Afrofuturist imaginary in Wanuri Kahiu’s Pumzi.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 37 (4): 324–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2020.1820543.
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Wachira, James (2016). “Animal Oral Praise Poetry and the Samburu Desire to Survive.”. In Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms, ed. F. F. Moolla, 97–117. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. https://doi…
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