Ayele Kebede Roba

Profile

Biography

Ayele joined the Department of English and Related Literatures in 2024. Before he started his job at the University York, Ayele was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, SOAS University of London. He specializes in the literatures of two widely spoken African languages (Amharic and Afan Oromo) indigenous to the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on the novel, literary multilingualism, the interplay between oral literature and literary texts, and the relation of literature to the broader socio-cultural practices in Africa that range from gender and religion to politics. His research follows an interdisciplinary approach to contemporary literature and draws insights from the theories of world literature, comparative literature, narrative studies, and gender studies in the modern period. 

Ayele completed his PhD at SOAS in Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies with a special focus on Ethiopian literature in 2022. His PhD research was funded by the ERC project, Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies (MULOSIGE): A New Approach to World Literature led by Prof. Francesca Orsini, who also supervised Ayele’s thesis. Being informed by the theories of world literature and narrative studies, Ayele’s thesis proposes a contextual and multilingual approach to novels in two Ethiopian languages in the context of an internally conflicted literary tradition and it is the first substantive work that attempts to situate the Ethiopian literature within the study of world literature. Ayele also holds an MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Addis Ababa University and a BA in English Language and Literature from Ambo University.

Ayele has a wide range of research experience that spans from small classroom action research to advanced university level research projects. His recent postdoctoral project explores the nexus between oral literature (orature), gender and world literature from an African perspective, and is being developed into a book. The book aims to open up the canon of world and national literature to the verbal arts of marginalised women in Ethiopia, thus ‘engendering’ world literature and ‘worlding’ orature. 

He has presented at conferences and seminars held at Naples University, Berlin University, Oxford University, Shanghai University, Bule Hora University and Addis Ababa University. Besides, Ayele organised two conferences on the Guji cultural studies and Gadaa studies in 2020 and co-organised the MULOSIGE conference on Oral Traditions and World Literature in Addis Ababa in December 2019. His research has been published in, or submitted to, high-impact journals on African literatures including Critical African Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, and Journal of Oromo Studies where he explored various aspects of African literature such as the use of women’s folksongs to fight patriarchal oppression, multilingualism as a form of literary resistance, and how minor literature is created through literary texts. He also published in The Routledge Handbook of African Literature and his other chapters have been submitted to the edited volumes on multilingualism and orature in World Literature. 

Ayele is teaching courses and supervising students in African literatures, world literature, and cultural studies.

Finally, Ayele has extensive managerial and administrative experience at different levels in Ethiopian universities and colleges where he participated in staff recruitment and supervision, module coordination and curriculum development. He worked as a leader of the Higher Diploma Program, a College Dean, a Provost to the Vice President for Academic, Research and Community Services and as a Director of the Institute of Gadaa and Culture Studies at Bule Hora University. 

Research

Overview

Ayele’s research focuses on the relationship between literature and wider socio-cultural issues in African and world literatures with particular focus on the Horn of Africa. Specifically, Ayele’s publications and projects extensively address literary multilingualism, the interplay between orature and literature, orature and gender in world literature, orature and digital media in Ethiopia, the novel and folk songs. His recent postdoctoral project explores the nexus between oral literature (orature), gender and world literature from African perspective and being developed into a book. The book aims to open up the canon of world literature and national literature to the verbal arts of marginalised women in Ethiopia, thus ‘engendering’ world literature and ‘worlding’ orature.

His research has been published in, or submitted to, high-impact journals on African literatures including Critical African Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, and Journal of Oromo Studies where he explored various aspects of African literature such as the use of women folksongs to fight patriarchal oppression, multilingualism as a form of literary resistance, and how minor literature is created through literary texts. He also published in Routledge  Handbook of African Literature and his other chapters have been submitted to edited volumes on multilingualism and orature in world literature. 

Teaching

Undergraduate

Ayele teaches modules in African literatures (both Afrophone and Anglophone literatures), world literature, and cultural studies.

Currently Ayele is teaching and contributing to undergraduate modules including African Imaginations and Afrophone Literatures and A World of Literature II: Empire and Aftermaths.