Nigerian writer, Nduka Otiono, appointed Director at Canadian University

Nigerian writer, Nduka Otiono: appointed Director at Canadian University


By Nehru Odeh

Nduka Otiono, Nigerian writer, poet and scholar, has been appointed Director of Carleton University’s Institute of African Studies. The appointment, which is for a three year term, takes effect on July 1, 2022.

Announcing the appointment in a statement, Pauline Rankin, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Carleton University described Otiono as “an Associate Professor in the Institute of African Studies whose work spans creative writing, cultural studies, oral performance and literature in Africa, and postcolonial studies”.

“His recent publications include the co-edited volume of essays, Polyvocal Bob Dylan: Music, Performance, Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2021),” he said.

Reacting to the appointment, Otiono, former General Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors, said: “I humbly embrace this appointment and call to service as the new Director of our beloved Institute of African Studies at Carleton University, Canada’s foremost Institute of African Studies.

“When I joined this unit as the first full-time faculty member on tenure track in 2014, I had no idea that within 7 years, I would be entrusted with its leadership as the first Director not appointed from outside of the institute.

“Recognizing that this is our home department and the intellectual and cultural hub for the study of Africa in Canada is essential to my vision for the Institute. I count on our great local and international community and partners for the necessary cooperation and support to advance the Institute in its second decade of existence–having been founded in 2009.

“I thank the hiring committee and the University administration for choosing me to lead our great Institute at this critical juncture in its history. I thank my colleagues and our passionate students whose confidence in my work continue to inspire me to excel.

“I would also like to acknowledge the endless love from my family without which this Canadian journey would have been a lonesome walk on the snow. Finally, as we say as people of faith and in Niger lingo, To God be the glory.”

Otiono was first appointed Assistant Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 2013, becoming the first appointee of what was then the university’s newfound Institute of African Studies.

An accomplished journalist, he once worked for a number of reputable newspapers in Nigeria such as The Guardian, ThisDay and Post Express. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, (1987) and an MA in English from the same university (1990). He also holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta, Canada (2011).

While at the University of Alberta, he won prestigious awards such as F.S Chia Fellowship, Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize, and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship — and earning nomination for the Governor General’s Gold Medal for academic distinction.

In 2011, he held a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University, where he was also appointed Visiting Assistant Professor, but the Banting Fellowship took him back to Canada.

A fellow of the William Joiner Centre for War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston, his interdisciplinary research focuses on ‘street stories’ or popular urban narratives in postcolonial Africa, and how they travel across multiple cultural formations including oral literature, the news media, film, popular music, and social media.

He is the author of The Night Hides with a Knife (short stories), which won the ANA/Spectrum Prize; Voices in the Rainbow (poems), shortlisted for the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize; and Love in a Time of Nightmares (poems), for which he was awarded the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing. He has co-edited We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women (1998), and Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria (2006).