Dr Terri Ochiagha
Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literatures
- Department of English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
Department of English
University of Edinburgh
50 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LH - City
- Post code
Background
Dr Terri Ochiagha is a literary critic and cultural historian and a world-leading expert on the work of the ‘father of modern African Literature’, Chinua Achebe. She holds a B.A., M.A., and PhD in English from Complutense University, Madrid. Her first book, Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite (2015) won the African Studies Association of the UK’s inaugural Fage&Oliver Prize for the most outstanding book on Africa published in 2014-2015. She is also the author of A Short History of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (2018).
In January 2024, she began working on the first-full length biography of Chinua Achebe, Chinua Achebe: A Life at the Crossroads, under contract with Princeton University Press. The project has received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and Princeton University Press. In addition, Dr Ochiagha is also editing Chinua Achebe in Context, a collection of 24 newly-commissioned essays, for Cambridge University Press.
In January 2025, she became the McMillan-Stewart Fellow at the Hutchins Centerof African & African American Research at Harvard University. She is currently a Non-Resident Fellow of the Center. In Trinity Term, she was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford, where she convened a landmark British Academy Conference, Achebe Redivivus.
In April 2025, the British Academy announced that Dr Ochiagha had been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, which will enable her to concentrate exclusively on research from September 2025 until the end of August 2026. She will be the Baxandall Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge, from January 2026 and until the end of June, and will be delivering the prestigious Baxandall Lecture in March 2026. See the announcement from Robinson College here: https://www.robinson.cam.ac.uk/news/welcome-our-new-visiting-baxandall-fellows. Details on her lecture will be available in due course.
Dr Ochiagha’s academic career in the UK began with the award of a prestigious British Academy Newton International Fellowship, which recruits the best postdoctoral researchers across all relevant disciplines from around the world. She has held positions in various UK universities, including King’s College London, where she was a Teaching Fellow in the History of Modern Africa, and the University of Oxford, where she has—at various times—been a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College, Visiting Researcher at the African Studies Centre, and tutor in Postcolonial African Literatures at Wycliffe Hall.
As aforementioned Dr Ochiagha will not be undertaking any teaching nor administrative duties, and will be concentrating exclusively on research until the end of August 2026.
For all commercial publishing, film and media enquiries, as well as non-university speaking engagements please contact her agents at
Qualifications
BA, MA, PhD, Complutense University, Madrid
Undergraduate teaching
Postgraduate teaching
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Dr Ochiagha would be interested in supervising well-qualified PhD students working on biography, any aspect of life-writing , the work of Chinua Achebe, first-generation Nigerian writing, or elite colonial education in British Africa. She is currently not accepting any projects that deviate from these specific demarcations and does not respond to unsolicited requests for supervision and/or mentorship from postdoctoral researchers .