Dr Anenechukwu Amoke

Postdoctoral Research Associate

‘The Nation of Refuge project creates an important space for thinking across literary studies, community collaboration, and public culture. My strand looks at how refuge is mediated through writing, storytelling, and material interpretation, and how these forms contribute to wider cultural understandings of refugees and refuge in Britain.

I am especially interested in approaches that allow refugees not only to be represented, but also to participate in interpreting and producing culture. Through literature, workshops, and museum engagement, this work asks how new understandings of refuge can emerge.

I hope the project encourages both academic and public audiences to ask new questions about representation, belonging, and Britain’s relationship to refugees in the present.’

 

Anene will lead on strand 3 of the research: Refugee movements to Britain from 2000 to current day

Anenechukwu’s research examines the experiences of present-day refugees in Britain. He contrasts lived experience with how refugees are represented, perceived and talked about by the British public and British institutions, including the media and the government. In addition, how refugees are represented and their experiences documented in museums. He will also contribute to the research themes within  the other strands of work.

 

I’m excited about the opportunity to:

• contribute expertise in postcolonial migration literature, cultural theory, and storytelling to deepen understanding of refugee experience and Britain’s response.
• Make archival materials more visible and accessible by bringing them into wider public and scholarly conversations and by engaging people with lived experience of refuge in their interpretation.
• Explore refugee-produced narratives as literature, encouraging a reading of these narratives as literary works rather than primarily as exhibits.
• Examine and rethink the frameworks through which refugee experience is understood.