Ashleigh Harris
Professor at Department of English
- Telephone:
- +46 18 471 12 52
- E-mail:
- ashleigh.harris@engelska.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3 L
- Postal address:
- Box 527
751 20 Uppsala - Available:
- Torsdagar 13-14
Download contact information for Ashleigh Harris at Department of English
- ORCID:
- 0000-0002-6207-3067
Short presentation
Ashleigh Harris is Professor of English Literature. Her research interests are African literature, book and print history, literary ephemera and metadata. She is currently the primary investigator of the research project 'African Literary Metadata (ALMEDA)', which has received Advanced Grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No: 101097763. See almedaresearch.org for more information.
Biography
Biographical information
Academic qualifications
BA Witwatersrand (1996); BA (Hons) Witwatersrand (1997); PhD Witwatersrand (2002)
Current and upcoming academic appointments
March 2021 – Present: Full Professor, Department of English, Uppsala University.
June 2019 – 31 May 2022: Research Associate, School of Literature, Languages and Media, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
January 2022 – July 2022: Research Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa.
November 2022 – present: Honorary Professor, Rhodes University, South Africa.

Publications
Recent publications
African Literary Metadata and Makerere University's Library
Part of Research in African Literatures, 2025
The Literary Metadata of African Little and Popular Magazines
2024
Communal Intellection and Individualism in the African Novel
Part of CAMBRIDGE JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERARY INQUIRY, p. 256-262, 2022
- DOI for Communal Intellection and Individualism in the African Novel
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Early Sesotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu Novels as World Literature
Part of African Literatures as World Literature, p. 115-138, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
Part of Claiming Space, p. 59-84, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
- DOI for The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
- Download full text (pdf) of The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
All publications
Articles in journal
African Literary Metadata and Makerere University's Library
Part of Research in African Literatures, 2025
Communal Intellection and Individualism in the African Novel
Part of CAMBRIDGE JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERARY INQUIRY, p. 256-262, 2022
- DOI for Communal Intellection and Individualism in the African Novel
- Download full text (pdf) of Communal Intellection and Individualism in the African Novel
‘The Diary of a Country in Crisis’: Zimbabwean Censorship and Adaptive Cultural Forms
Part of Journal of Southern African Studies, p. 787-798, 2021
- DOI for ‘The Diary of a Country in Crisis’: Zimbabwean Censorship and Adaptive Cultural Forms
- Download full text (pdf) of ‘The Diary of a Country in Crisis’: Zimbabwean Censorship and Adaptive Cultural Forms
African Street Literature: A Method for an Emergent Form Beyond World Literature
Part of Research in African Literatures, p. 1-26, 2020
Hot Reads, Pirate Copies, and the Unsustainability of the Book in Africa’s Literary Future
Part of Postcolonial Text, 2019
"The island is not a story in itself": apartheid's world literature
Part of Safundi, p. 321-337, 2018
- DOI for "The island is not a story in itself": apartheid's world literature
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Introduction: African Street Literatures and the Global Publishing Go-Slow
Part of English Studies in Africa, p. 1-8, 2018
Plastic Form and the Extro- and Emergent Versions of Christopher Mlalazi’s Running with Mother
Part of Journal of African Cultural Studies, p. 356-370, 2018
Awkward Form and Writing the African Present
Part of The Johannesburg Salon, p. 3-8, 2014
The Danish African: Wolle Kirk, whiteness andcolonial complicity
Part of Kult, p. 45-64, 2013
Part of Journal for Cultural Research, p. 1-15, 2013
Unruly Pedagogies; Migratory Interventions: Unsettling Cultural Studies
Part of Critical Arts. A Journal for Cultural Studies, p. 3-14, 2012
An Awkward Silence: Reflections on Theory and Africa
Part of Kunapipi, 2012
Part of English Studies in Africa, p. 111-115, 2009
"Until Time Makes Him White": Race, Land, and Insurrection in The Rose of Rhodesia
Part of Screening the Past: An International, refereed, electronic journal of screen history, 2009
Introduction: Beyond Nationalism: New Perspectives on Zimbabwean and Rhodesian Writing
Part of English Studies in Africa, p. 1-11, 2007
"An Ingenious Tenderness": the choreography of violence in Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins
Part of Scrutiny2: issues in English studies in Southern Africa, p. 30-46, 2007
Accountability, Acknowledgement and the Ethics of 'Quilting' in Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull
Part of Journal of Literary Studies, p. 27-53, 2006
"If she hollers/Let her go": Toni Morrison as Public Intellectual
Part of English Studies in Africa, p. 47-60, 2005
Toni Morrison and Yvonne Vera: An Associative Fugue
Part of Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, p. 6-18, 2004
From Suffragist to Apologist: the erasure of feminist politics in a politically correct patriarchy
Part of Journal of International Women's Studies, p. 21-39, 2003
Speaking the "Truth by Dissembling": Necessary Ambiguities in the Tar-Baby Tale
Part of Journal of Literary Studies, p. 58-75, 2000
Books
Afropolitanism and the Novel: De-realizing Africa
Routledge, 2019
Chapters in book
Early Sesotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu Novels as World Literature
Part of African Literatures as World Literature, p. 115-138, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
Part of Claiming Space, p. 59-84, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
- DOI for The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
- Download full text (pdf) of The locations and orientations of South African literature: From Sol Plaatje to Peter Abrahams
Locating Chronic Violence: Billy Kahora’s “How to Eat a Forest”
Part of World Literatures, p. 107-118, Stockholm University Press, 2018
Part of South and North, p. 1-22, Routledge, 2018
Afropolitanism and Unusable Global Space
Part of Cosmopolitanisms, p. 240-253, New York University Press, 2017
Afropolitan style and unusable global spaces
Part of Cosmopolitanisms, p. 303-321, New York University Press, 2016
Facing/Defacing Robert Mugabe: land reclamation, race and the end of colonial accountability
Part of What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say, p. 105-120, Routledge, 2015
What revolt in the postcolony today?
Part of Traversing transnationalism, p. 227-250, Rodopi, 2011
Discourses of Dirt and Disease in Operation Murambatsvina
Part of The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe, p. 40-50, Weaver Press, 2008
Part of Versions of Zimbabwe, p. 103-118, Weaver Press, 2005
Collections (editor)
African Street Literature: English Studies in Africa Volume 61, 2018 - Issue 2
Taylor & Francis Group, 2018
South and North: Contemporary Urban Orientations
Routledge, 2018
Unruly Pedagogies; Migratory Interventions: Unsettling Cultural Studies
Taylor & Francis Group, 2012
University of the Witwatersrand Press, 2007
Beyond Nationalism: New Perspectives on Zimbabwean and Rhodesian Writing, 1890-2007
Routledge, 2007
Conference papers
Literary form and the poetics of hustling in an African city
2016
Decelerating fiction: slow violence in four African novels
2016
Concurrent Whiteness: Apartheid's Transnational Mirrors
2015
African fiction and the politics of global publishing, literary awards and creative writing programs
2014
Mutation and the African Present: Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland (2008) and Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014)
2014
Between ideals and reality: the iconic legacy of Nelson Mandela
2014
Close Encounters with Global Whiteness in Apartheid Southern Africa
2012
Terrorism and the Uncanny in J.M. Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg
2012
Militarising Youth: a (post)colonial counterpoint
2011
Estranging the Nation: Rescuing Foreignness in Contemporary Zimbabwean Writing
2010
Scandinavian Exceptionalism and the Land Redistribution Campaign in Zimbabwe
2010
The Social Value of Advanced Creative Writing Courses
2009
Nordic Exceptionalism and Whiteness in the South African Literary Imagination
2009
2008
What Revolt in the Postcolony Today?
2008
Zimbabwe will never be a colony again: time and return in the third chimurenga
2008
Writing Postcolonial Violence: a literary dilemma
2008
Discourses of Dirt and Disease in Operation Murambatsvina
2007
Reports
Other
Part of South African Historical Journal, p. 219-227, 2006