Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bekers

Prof. dr. Elisabeth Bekers is Senior Lecturer of British and Postcolonial Literature in the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She teaches literature in English and research methodology in the BA and MA programmes in Linguistics and Literary Studies at VUB, in the MA in African Studies at the University of Ghent and in the interuniversity MA in Gender and Diversity. Her research focuses on authors of African descent, with a particular interest in image/knowledge production, canon formation, intersectionality and the imagination of Europe and Brussels in literature. Currently she is working on experimental black British women writers and, as part of an international network, on literary imaginings of Europe from peripheries in and beyond Europe. She has authored Rising Anthills: African and African American Writing on Female Genital Excision, 1960–2000 (U Wisconsin P, 2010) and co-edited various special issues and volumes, including "Black British Women Writers" (Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 2022), "Legacies of Robinson Crusoe" (JLIC 2020), "City Portraits" (JLIC 2019), "Creativity and Captivity" (Life Writing 2018), Imaginary Europes (Routledge 2016/pb 2019; Journal of Postcolonial Writing 2015), Brussel schrijven/Ecrire Bruxelles (VUB Press 2016) and Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe (Matatu Rodopi 2009). She is co-director of the international Platform for Postcolonial Readings for junior researchers, and editor of an academic website on Black British Women Writers (www.vub.ac.be/TALK/BBWW).