Cristovão Nwachukwu is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Florida. He obtained his B.A. in Portuguese and English language and literature in 2017 from the Federal University of Bahia, in Brazil. His doctoral research explores the representations of Black African immigrants in contemporary African novels that take place in the U.S. and Europe and the impacts of racialization and trauma in the African family unit. His research interests include postcolonial studies, decolonial studies, and migration and diaspora studies.
Since 2018, Cristovão has worked as a reviewer for CAS’ African Studies Quarterly and has participated in outreach programs and organized events sponsored by the center. In 2020, he was part of the organization committee for the Achebe Baldwin @ 40, where he organized graduate students’ contributions in the panel The Future of Blackness @ UF, which he created and chaired. He has also given talks at Eastside High School and Hawthorne High School about colonization, imperialism, and history in African literature.
Currently, he is Imagining America’s 2022-2023 PAGE fellow. He plans to use the knowledge gained during the fellowship as well as his experience with publicly engaged scholarship, to give more visibility to African literary culture. He hopes his work broadens the humanities curriculum at UF and continues to translate into inclusive teaching practices.