Dr Bonaventure Munganga

I hold a BA in English (ISP/Bukavu-DR Congo), an MA in Literary Stylistics (University of Birmingham-UK), and a PhD in English Literary Studies (UNSW-Sydney). I am also an alumnus of the 2019 Harvard Institute for World Literature session, and a recipient of the 2025 Balzan Colloquium Award, fully funded by Harvard University’s Institute for World Literature, for presenting my work at the institute’s colloquium on Literary Responses to Ecological Crisis. My primary and broad research interests span Literary and Cultural Theory and Criticism, Aesthetics and Politics, and Literature and Philosophy. My much narrower interest is in multilingual Environmental Humanities in the context of Comparative Black and Indigenous Race, Cultures, Literatures and Arts, with focus on their epistemologies, (eco)aesthetic and poetics. My work uses an intersubjective ethnography approach for a (renovated) critical reading of Indigenous literature, grounded within Indigenous cultures and values, and developed through meaningful interpersonal relations. To attend to the global pertinence of these literatures, I bring African Indigenous theories of knowledge into conversation with both other world Indigenous forms of knowledge creation and the post-Enlightenment forms of critical thinking that underpin much contemporary environmental discourse and policy development. I am currently working on a literary and cultural project funded by a British Academy ODA Challenge-Oriented Research grant, on “Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC (June 2024-December 2026); and a UNSW-KU Leuven collaborative seed fund project in energy humanities, on "Technological Innovation and Energy Justice with Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs in D.R.Congo" to set up an international multidisciplinary collaborative research network among researchers from UNSW-Sydney (Australia), KU Leuven (Belgium), Université de Lubumbashi and Université de Kisangani (DR Congo), in preparation for larger research grant applications (January-December 2025). The eclecticism of my research also informs my teachings in Colonialism: Resistance, Justice and Transition; Comparative Global Indigenous Histories and Politics; Media, Culture and Everyday Life; Media, Climate Crisis, and Extinction; Digital Cultures; and Race, Media, and Politics. My published work has appeared in Theory, Culture and Critique, Cogent Arts and Humanities, European Journal of English and American Studies, and Transmotion. Parts of my work have also been presented in conferences at Harvard University, Cambridge University, University of Sydney, UNSW-Sydney, Western Sydney University, and London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research. To end with, I have also previously worked, and I still maintain abiding interest, in emergency and development projects management and coordination, research in gender and agriculture, cultural affairs, as well as translation and interpreting.