Dr Daniel Chukwuemeka

Leverhulme Fellow

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I am a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Fellow in English Literature at Northumbria University, Newcastle. I hold a jointly awarded PhD in Literature, Media, and Cultural Studies (with a focus on African Anglophone Literature) from the University of Bristol and Macquarie University, Sydney, completed under a fully funded cotutelle supervision arrangement. My doctoral and postdoctoral research focuses on African and Afrodiasporic literatures, with particular attention to race, migration, economic exclusion, and the cultural logics of global capitalism.

My current research project on the intersections of “Literature, Race, Economics, and the African Diaspora in the United States,” examines how race functions as an economic framework in African immigrant narratives in the US. The project is expected to yield my second monograph, The Ugly Immigrant: Economy of Race in Contemporary Afrodiasporic Novels. My wider scholarly work sits at the intersection of postcolonial studies, migration studies, Black studies, and the economic humanities.

My forthcoming monograph, African Hustler Narratives: E-fraud Economy and Postmillennial Capitalism (University of Michigan Press), develops a theoretical account of hustler subjectivity and neoliberal improvisation in contemporary African literature. This research is also being adapted into a documentary film, African Robinhood: The Making of a Prodigal Scammer, reflecting my commitment to public-facing and interdisciplinary scholarship.

I have taught literature and cultural studies in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and Australia, including appointments at Godfrey Okoye University, the University of Nigeria, Bournemouth University, the University of Bristol, and Macquarie University. Prior to joining Northumbria, I worked as a language editor for the Oxford English Dictionaries in Germany and completed a Mitacs Globalink–funded research visit at Carleton University, Canada.

My work has appeared in leading journals and edited collections, and I am the editor of the special issue, “Narratives of Capital” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2025).

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Postcolonial and Global Black Literatures; Diasporic African Literatures; Global Migration; Studies in Literature, Race, and Economics; Gender and Minority Studies; Media and Cultural Studies

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Coming of Age in a Hustler Economy: E-fraud Narratives and the Postcolonial African Bildungsroman, Chukwuemeka, D. 2 Apr 2024, The Postcolonial Bildungsroman and the Character of Place, Lincoln, US, University of Nebraska Press
The Sound of Silent Memories: Negotiating Cultural Memory through Urban Noise in Teju Cole’s Open City, Chukwuemeka, D. 2020, Vernon Press, Vernon Press
Hustler Masculinity in the Nigerian E-fraud Novel, Chukwuemeka, D. 1 Jun 2022, In: Research in African Literatures
E-fraud economy as an emergent perspective towards the corpus of African hustler narratives, Chukwuemeka, D. 17 Mar 2021, In: Journal of the African Literature Association