Dr. Deborah Nyangulu
Masamba aMchezo a.k.a. Pages of Play: Transception and AI-Integrated Social Media Cultures
This Habilitation project is a culmination of years of work and it investigates the effects of social media users using AI-Integrated social media platforms to disrupt and not-to disrupt techno-plutocratic space-times. Taking Masamba aMchezo, the Chichewa translation and conception of social media as its point of departure, the project explores that if the element of mchezo (play) is at the core of social media, how is it caught up in enigma in which it simultaneously disrupts and not-disrupts techno-plutocratic space-times. The project works with the assumption that under techno-plutocratic space-times, our societies are increasingly embedded under layered systems of violent control in which our freedom to freely inhabit the earth and share in the planet’s resources is constantly usurped by a privileged elite or powerful individuals who possess immense wealth, influence, a monopoly on technology and data, and the means to capture institutions and the state. The project will take the form of a monograph with seven chapters and examines specific social media case studies that include hashtag movements and memes.
Research Interests
- Literary and Cultural Studies
- Contemporary African Literature & African Studies
- Masculinities and Power
- Social Media and Social Movements
- Black freedom struggles
- Critical Theory
- Theories and history of nation, nationalism, & transnationalism
Vita
Academic Qualifications
- 2019
Doctor of Philosophy (English Philology) – Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster
Dissertation Title Big Man Aesthetics: Masculiity, Power, and Contemporary African Literature - 2013
M.A. National and Transnational Studies: Literature, Language, Culture – Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster - 2005
B.A. Humanities (English and Classics) – University of Malawi, Chancellor College
Professional Experience
- 2022
Guest Editor of Research in African Literatures’ special Edition Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift: Disruption. - since 2022
Postdoctoral Researcher (RTG Contradiction Studies at University of Bremen. - 2020 – 2022
Postdoctoral Researcher (English, Postcolonial and Media Studies at University of Münster). - 2019 – 2020
Lecturer and Researcher (English, Postcolonial and Media Studies at University of Münster). - 2015 – 2019
Lecturer and PhD Candidate (English, Postcolonial and Media Studies at University of Münster). - 2008 – 2010
Senior Reporter and Columnist (Blantyre Newspapers Ltd, Times Group). - 2005 – 2008
Reporter (Blantyre Newspapers Ltd, Times Group).
Publications
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2025. Maps and Dissecting Empire. A Visit to the Osher Map Library. YouTube
- Nyangulu, Deborah & Souleymane Bachir Diagne. 2024. Philosophy in a World of Multi-Crisis: Deborah Nyangulu in Conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne. YouTube
- Willaert, Tom, Eckehard Olbrich, Carlo Santagiustina, Nora Zech, Jan Babnik, Lingyu Li, Shuyu Zhang, Marina Loureiro, Brogan Latil, Michelle Stewart, Brittany Elizabeth Zelada, Tahereh Aboofazeli, Deborah Nyangulu, Andrea Elena Febres Medina, Elif Bozkurt & Sara Nuta. 2024. Affordances for Expressing Collective Identities: The Case of the 2024 French Parliamentary Elections. Digital Methods Initiative.
- Stanusch, Natalia, Richard Rogers, Noemi Capparelli, Luca Bottani, Emma Garzoino, Marius Liedtke, Deborah Nyangulu, Omer Rothenstein, Chufan Huang, Michelle Stewart, Shuyu Zhang & Quyang (July) Zhao. 2024. What Do Deepfakes Want? Using ‘Digital Forensic Gaze’ and Digital Methods to see (like) Deepfakes. Digital Methods Initiative.
- Nyangulu, Deborah & Albert Sharra. 2023. Agency and Incentives of Diasporic Political Influencers on Facebook Malawi. Social Media + Society 9(2). DOI
- Folie, Sandra & Gianna Zocco. 2023. Sketches of Black Europe. A Series of Interviews. CompLit 2(6). 169–211. [Interview mit Deborah Nyangulu: 187–191.] DOI
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2022. Introduction. Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift: Disruption. Research in African Literatures 53(3). 1–22. DOI
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2022. State of the Planet: Homi Bhabha and Namwali Serpell in Conversation. Research in African Literatures 53(3). 161–167. DOI
- Nyangulu, Deborah (ed.). 2022. Special Issue: Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift: Disruption. Research in African Literatures 53(3). LINK
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2020. What’s in a Name? Renewing Socialism Via Decolonization. In Kerstin Knopf, & Detlev Quintern (eds.), From Marx to Global Marxism: Eurocentrism, Resistance, Postcolonial Criticism, 219–232. Trier: WVT.
- Espinoza Garrido, Felipe, Caroline Koegler, Deborah Nyangulu & Mark U. Stein. 2020. Introduction. African European Studies as a Critique of Contingent Belonging. In Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Caroline Koegler, Deborah Nyangulu & Mark U. Stein (eds.), Locating African European Studies: Interventions, Intersections, Conversations, 1–28. London: Routledge. DOI
- Espinoza Garrido, Felipe, Caroline Koegler, Deborah Nyangulu & Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2020. Locating African European Studies: Interventions, Intersections, Conversations. London: Routledge. DOI
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2019. Foreword: More Than Patriarchy. In Elizabeth Rogers (ed.), Anthology 2019: Stories of the Struggle for Education and Equality in Malawi, 16–18. Voice Flame.
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2018. Big Men and Performances of Sovereignty in Contemporary African Novels. Research in African Literatures 49(3). 101–115. LINK
- Nyangulu, Deborah. 2018.Nationalism and the Postcolonial. ACOLIT 75. 25–26. PDF
Talks, Workshops and Events
Invited Talks
- 24.06.2023
Roundtable Responsibility in Gender and Queer Studies at the Summer School Dialogues for Responsible Gender and Queer Studies: Experiences from the South of Africa and Germany, University of Oldenburg [Invited by Dr. Sylvia Pritsch] - 15.11.2022
Guest Lecture Serpell’s The Old Drift: Disruption at the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL), Amsterdam [Invited by Prof. Dr. Margriet van der Waal and Dr. Astrid Weyenberg]. - 07.07.2022
Online Lecture #GandhiMustFall Movement and Reclaiming Urban Space in Malawi. Forms and Spaces of Contemporary African Protests at the Online Lecture Series Forms and Spaces of contemporary African Protests, University of Konstanz [Invited by Drs. Billy Kalima and Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer] - 23.05.2022
Lecture Series Engaged Pedagogy and Digital Activism. Activism and Academia Lecture Series Graduate School Practices of Literature, University of Münster [Invited by Dr. Anna Thiemann] - 11. – 13.03.2021
Workshop Rethinking Knowledge in Transnational Terms. Theorizing African Diaspora(s) at the Anew Workshop. Bielefeld Zif Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Bielefeld [Invited by Prof. Dr. Gigi Adair] - 08.07.2020
Online Public Lecture Hashtag Movements and Decolonial Pedagogy.
Invited by Prof. Dr. Annika Mcpherson, Universität Augsburg on 08.07.2020.
Invited by Dr. Chandra Kanta Panda, Barabazar Bikram Tudu Memorial College on 24.06.2020.
Invited by Arbeitskreis Kolonialismus, WWU Münster on 10.06.2020. - 13.11.2018
Critical Reading and Public Discussion Versklavung für Baumwolle with Sukla Chatterjee, Kerstin Knopf und Detlev Quintern at “Eine Uni- Ein Buch – Eine Stadt: Global Cotton”, University of Bremen [Invited by Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf] - 21.06.2018
Lecture Postcolonial Resurrections: Emerging Debates in the 21st Century Present at Decolonize: Lange Nacht der Postkolonialen Perspektiven, Institut für Politikwissenschaft WWU Münster [Invitation from student initiative Institut für Politikwissenschaft WWU Münster] - 23.02.2018
Lecture Contemporary African Literary Studies Today at the Lecture Series African Scholars, Humboldt Haus WWU Münster [Invited by the Humboldt Haus WWU, Münster].
Conference Papers
- 23. – 25.02.2024
Conference Black Atlantic Affordances. Contested Memory Cultures at University of Texas at Austin - 14. – 16.03.2023
Talk Media Ecologies: Pitfalls of Activism on Social Media Platforms. At the workshop Bridging Black Freedom Struggles Network Workshop, AmerikaHaus Munich - 08. – 10.09.2022
Talk Skeleton Subjectivity: Reading Derek Landy with Amos Tutuola at the International Workshop on Contemporary Irish Literature, University of Leipzig - 09. – 10.04.2022
Talk Towards a Pluriversal African Literary System at the Disobedient Forms Symposium, Stellenbosch South Africa - 23. – 25.03.2022
Talk From a Colonial Memoir to Avengers: Infinity War: Historical Continuities of Racial Anxieties and Ecological Apocalypse at Sketches of Black Europe: Imagining Europe/ans in African and African Diasporic Narratives, ZfLBerlin - 05. – 06.02.2019
Talk The Self-help Genre and Public Intellectuals in the Digital Age at Postcolonial Intellectuals and Their European Publics, Utrecht University - 11. – 13.09.2018
Talk Performing Bigmanity: Masculinities in Meja Mwangi’s Rafiki Man Guitar’ at the ASA UK 2018 Conference, University of Birmingham - 09. – 12.05.2018.
Talk Bigmanism and the Aesthetics of Power at the GAPS International Conference: Nationalism and the Postcolonial, Johannes Gutenberg Mainz - 04. – 05.05.2018
Talk Marxism and Utopian Visions in Contemporary African Literature at the lecture series Karl Marx, Marxism and the Global South, University of Bremen - 14. – 17.06.2017
Talk Necropolitan Spaces in Meja Mwangi’s The Big Chiefs at the African Literature Association Conference, Yale University, New Haven, USA - 08. – 10.07.2016
Talk Mapping a Big Man Aesthetics in Contemporary African Literature at the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS-6), Sorbonne, Paris - 06. – 09.04.2016
Talk Hero(ines)/Villains in Time of War: Affirming and Subverting Big Man Power in Dongala’s Johnny Mad Dog at the African Literature Association (ALA) 2016, Emory University and Kennesaw State University, Atlanta, USA - 14. – 16.05.2015
Talk The Postcolonial as False Totality at GAPS: Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts, University of Muenster - 11. – 14.06.2014
Talk “What is Africa?” at the Young Scholars’ Meeting FUTURE AFRICA – Conference of the African Studies Association in Germany (VAD), University of Bayreuth - 16.05.2014
Talk Estranging a Strange Tyranny: Legson Kayira’s The Detaine at the Strangely Familiar Graduate Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Teaching
- Negotiating User Identities Under Techno-plutocratic Structures (MA seminar, taught Winter 2025/26)
- Radicalism: Still Contradictory But Nevertheless Justifiable (Graduate seminar for scholarship holders of Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst, taught Summer 2024)
- Nation, Nationalism, Transnationalism: Historical and Theoretical Foundations (MA seminar taught Winter 2021/22, Winter 2020/21, and Winter 2019/20)
- Postgraduate Class, Literary Studies (MA Colloquium taught Summer 2022, Summer 2021, Winter 2019/20, Winter 2018/19, and Summer 2017)
- Hashtag Activism and Shifting Public Spheres (MA Seminar taught Winter 2019/20)
- Social Protests, Social Media, and Hashtag Movements (MA Seminar taught Summer 2018)
- Hotspots in Literary/Cultural Studies and Linguistics (MA Lecture Series taught Summer 2018)
- Advanced Language Course (MA Übung taught Summer 2019)
- Literary and Cultural Studies (Supplementary MA Seminar taught Winter 2018/19 and (Winter 2017/18)
- Narratives of Migration (Supplementary MA Seminar taught Summer 2016)
- Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift: Theory and Literature (BA Übung taught Summer 2021)
- Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies (BA Grundkurs taught Summer 2020)
- Theory and Literature (BA Übung taught Summer 2019)
- Understanding Critical Theory and Practice (BA Seminar taught Winter 2018/19)
- Communicating Texts and Theories (BA Übung taught Summer 2018, Summer 2017, Winter 2015/16)
- Academic Skills (BA Übung taught Winter 2017/18 and 2015/16)
- Criticism, Theory and Practice (BA seminar taught Winter 2016/17)
- Character and the Grotesque in post-Independence African Novels (BA Seminar taught Winter 2016/17)
- Introduction to Contemporary Anglophone African Literature (BA Seminar taught Summer 2016)