Researcher, Writer, Librettist
Yvette Christiansë is Claire Tow Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature, and a member of the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York.
As a Public Fellow, Yvette Christiansë will work intensively at LIAS with the 2024/25 cohort of fellows on research topics that address postcolonialism, the persistence of racializing practices, and environmental humanities in the Global South (with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa).
She was born in South Africa during apartheid. She moved between Swaziland and South Africa until the age of 18 when her family emigrated to Australia. She completed her doctorate at the University of Sydney. South Africa continues to be central to her research and writing. Her archival research of over three decades traces the fates of those liberated from slaving vessels during the long maritime histories of combating slavery in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas between 1807 and the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
There are continuities between her scholarly writings and her fiction and poetry. She is the author of Unconfessed (Other Press, 2006, 2024; Kwela Books 2007; Querido, 2007). Her poetry collections include Castaway (Duke University Press, 1999) and Imprendehora (Kwela Books, 2000). Imprendehora was a finalist for the 2010 Via Afrika Poetry Prize. Imprendehora was a finalist for the 2010 Via Afrika Herman Charles Bosman Prize, and Castaway was finalist for the 2001 PEN International Poetry Prize. Unconfessed was awarded the 2007 ForeWord/BEA Bronze for Historical Fiction, and a finalist for the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. It was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize and International Dublin Literary Award 2008, as nominated for the 2010 Ama Ata Aidoo Prize. Christiansë has been honoured with the Harri Jones Memorial Prize for Poetry (Australia).