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- Who We Are/
Who We Are
The ERC Starting Grant Project AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE brings together a diverse and interdisciplinary team of scholars. It consists of three researchers and several student assistants at U Bremen as well as numerous associated researchers and fellows. Their expertise spans a range of fields, including literary and cultural studies, African diaspora and Afroeuropean studies, digital humanities, and postcolonial theory. Our collaborative efforts aim to unravel the complex textures of Afroeuropean imaginations, digital agency, and poetic strategies within diasporic communities.
Contact #
To contact our team, please reach out to afroeuropecyberspace@uni-bremen.de
The Team at U Bremen
Principal Investigator
Julia is a Romance literary and cultural studies scholar with a particular focus on postcolonial literatures in French and Spanish, Afroeuropean studies and digital media studies.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Merveilles holds a PhD in Littérature générale et comparée from Université de Lorraine, Metz. Her research interests include Afroeuropean studies, postcolonial / decolonial theory, identity constructions, migration and diaspora studies, digital media studies and children’s young adult literature.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Francesca holds a PhD in French and Francophone Literatures. Her research focuses on postcolonial studies, decolonial theory, diaspora studies and transmedia studies.
Doctoral Candidate
Ximena holds a Master’s Degree in Education (Hispanic Studies and Philosophy) from the Universities of Oldenburg and Bremen. Her research interests include postcolonial theories, intersectional feminism, postmodern migration, the critique of neoliberalism, and constructions of femininity and masculinity.
Doctoral Candidate
Nelson recently defended his PhD thesis in the DFG Research Training Group 2686 ‘Contradiction Studies’ and the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS). From 2024 to 2025, he was a doctoral researcher in the ERC project. He is now working on a new postdoc project on healing cinema.
External Contractor
Liam is a M.A. student at the Department of Math and Computer Science at U Bremen and worked for the project as a student assistant from 2023 to 2025. As a full stack developer with a passion for art and design and over 10 years of experience in the tech industry, he was responsible for developing the project website and the digital analyzing tools of the project. Currently, he’s developping a structured SQLite database for the project as an external contractor.
Helena Montalvo
Student Assistant
Helena is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Hispanic Studies and Arts at the U Bremen. Her interests include the representation of the African diaspora in Europe and the Spanish-speaking Americas on digital platforms, as well as issues of identity, migration, feminism and decolonialism.
Associated Researchers
University of Ghent, Belgium
Shola is an Associate Professor of African literature at Ghent University and PI of the ERC Starting Grant Yoruba Print Culture. He is an expert of African literature in the digital age. Shola and Julia organized lots of academic events and published together.
Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Senegal
Odome Angone holds a PhD in Spanish Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid and is a research professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Civilizations at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar. As an expert of afrocyberactivism, she is a regular invited guest at project activities, and she and Julia have already organized numerous conferences, workshops, and round tables together.
Prof. em. Dr. Gisela Febel
University of Bremen
Gisela is an emerita professor of Romance Literatures and Cultural Theory. She is a founding member and former director of the Institute of Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS) and the interdisciplinary research platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC). Her research interests include postcolonial literatures, diaspora studies, contemporary novels and poetry, theories of modernity, transcultural studies and transmedia questions of aesthetics and discourse. Gisela regularly participates in project activities, including conferences and publications.
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Linda is Profesora Titular at the Department of German and Slavic Studies at UCM. In her research, she explores the relationship between diaspora, (post-)migration and digitality in literary texts from German-speaking countries. Linda and Julia have already organized two conferences and numerous events on the topic and co-edited and co-authored various publications. Together, they founded the WOC research lab Digital Diaspora in 2020.
Digital Humanities, State and University Library of Bremen, Germany
Manfred holds a PhD in Mathematics and offers a Digital Humanities Advisory Service at the State and University Library of Bremen. This service focuses on methods and tools for the acquisition, refinement and analysis of textual data. We are in close contact regarding the use of digital humanities methods in literary and cultural studies.
Justus Liebig Universität Giessen – International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC)
Fiona is a PhD candidate at Justus Liebig University. She focuses on digital media self-representations of Black and Afro-diasporic communities in Spanish-speaking Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly Afro-Latinx podcasting. She participated in several project activities, and we are collaborating regarding digital humanities tools.
Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, Spain
María Ignacia is a doctoral candidate in the Humanities and Digital Society at the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Spain). She works as an editor and her interests include identity constructions, afrofeminisms, literature and afrocyberactivism in the Spanish-speaking world. She regularly participates in events organized by the project.
Fellows
Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, Spain
Andrea is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Anthropology, Basic Psychology and Public Health at U Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla. As a doctoral fellow of the AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE project and the DFG Research Training Group 2686 ‘Contradiction Studies’, she spent three months at the University of Bremen in 2024. She is a regular participant of our reading group and involved in our video interviews series.