In April 2026 I was named Scholar of the Month by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). In the interview published on the ASLE website I talk about how I came to ecocriticism, the writers and artists who shape my thinking, and the project I am working on now.
My path into the environmental humanities began in 2018, during graduate work in gender studies at Utrecht University. Feminist, queer and decolonial theory pushed me toward ecological questions, and the environmental humanities offered a space that brought together my interests in postcolonial literatures and gender studies.
Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist works remain foundational for me. I often return to Wanuri Kahiu's film Pumzi, which locates resistance in the capacity to imagine otherwise, and I read widely among artists and writers such as Wangechi Mutu, Nnedi Okorafor, N.K. Jemisin and Octavia E. Butler.
My current research approaches eco-anxiety as a socially and politically structured affect, shaped by narrative form. I ask how literary narratives mediate climate-related emotions across tensions between individual experience and collective responsibility, despair and hope, present crises and future possibilities. This work is part of SHIFT-GEN, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project I lead with colleagues at the University of Idaho, Ghent University and the University of Bologna.
Read the full interview on the ASLE website.
