Post-Colonial Literatures Research Group

About the Group

Founded in 1992, the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group represents an active community of scholars who work on a wide range of individual and collaborative projects, both within the Open University and in partnership with other academics and organisations. The group is organised as a research collective, and its activities are co-ordinated by its current director, Alex Tickell. 

The predominant focus of the group is on Anglophone literatures from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and forms of colonial and neo-colonial experience represented in these literary traditions, but group members’ interests also encompass the writing of the Caribbean and South-Asian diasporas; colonial cultural and literary history; anti-colonial political thought, and wider global literary systems. Members of the group also work on poetry, film and drama, anthropology, postcolonial theory, and the publishing and reception of literature in the post-colony.

In the past five years members of the group have directed and participated in several externally-funded AHRC projects (see Projects), organised numerous conferences and seminar series (see Events) and disseminated its research through the international journal Wasafiri. In the past two decades the group has published extensively and has shaped and informed the field of postcolonial studies.

Follow the History link for more information about the Postcolonial and Global Literatures Research Group.

The aims of the Group are:

• to investigate the various insights opened up by a postcolonial perspective on different periods and cultures;
• to facilitate and disseminate the publication of research by writers, scholars and critics;
• to organize seminars, symposia, exchanges and conferences, encouraging an international perspective upon debates in postcolonial studies;
• to encourage postgraduate research and publication;
• to develop collaborative research projects; and
• to promote the teaching of postcolonial literature in curricula at the Open University and more broadly.