Dr. Anja Oed

Curriculum Vitae

Anja Oed is a lecturer (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University. She is head of the Jahn Library for African Literatures and teaches courses on topics in African Literatures.

As head of the Jahn Library she organised two international Janheinz Jahn Symposia funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and another symposium funded by the Zentrum für Interkulturelle Studien, Johannes Gutenberg University:

• 9th International Janheinz Jahn Symposium, Beyond Murder by Magic: Investigating African Crime Fiction, 9-12 January 2008 (with Christine Matzke)
• 8th International Janheinz Jahn Symposium, Creative Writing in African Languages: Production, Mediation, Reception, 17-20 November 2004 (with Uta Reuster Jahn)
• Der Schwarze Orpheus als interkulturelle Metapher [Black Orpheus as intercultural metaphor], 23 July 2004.

In February 2002, Anja Oed completed her PhD in African Languages and Literatures at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her thesis was entitled “Antelope (Woman) and Buffalo (Woman): Contemporary Literary Transformations of a Topos in Yorùbá Culture”. During her PhD studies, she studied Yorùbá with Akin Oyetade and did fieldwork in southwestern Nigeria. Her PhD was funded by a DAAD PhD scholarship (HSP III), an AHRB fees-only award as well as a SOAS one-year-language scholarship and a SOAS postgraduate additional fieldwork award.

Before moving to London in 1997, she worked as a postgraduate student assistant with Prof. Dr. Monika Fludernik at the English Department, University of Freiburg. In 1996, she completed her M.A. in English Literature and Linguistics, Anthropology and Musicology at the University of Freiburg with a thesis on Ben Okri’s novels. During her M.A. studies in Freiburg, she spent the academic year 1993-94 at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (foreign exchange student award). There, she took first courses in African Literature, studied Swahili and acquired a Five-College African Studies Certificate.