US Mission welcomes Yale professor with Nigerian roots to UNILAG

The United States Mission has welcomed Dr. Cajetan Iheka, a professor of English at Yale University, to Nigeria.

In a post on X Saturday, the mission said that effective August 20, Iheka, who has Nigerian roots, began a 10-month Fulbright appointment at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).

“At UNILAG, he will lead seminars and training for early-career faculty and postgraduate students. He will also lead course development, contribute to graduate curriculum redesign, and mentor faculty through teaching and publishing workshops,” the post read.

Dr. Iheka serves as director of Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center, Chair of the Council on African Studies, Head of the Yale Africa Initiative, and Editor-in-Chief of African Studies Review.

The mission revealed that since 1960, there have been over 1,200 Fulbright scholars throughout Nigeria, many of whom currently occupy leadership positions in government as well as public, private and international institutions.

The Fulbright program is the US government’s flagship international academic exchange programme.

Iheka specialises in African and Caribbean literatures, ecocriticism, ecomedia, postcolonial literatures, and world literatures. He is author or editor of seven books, including Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature and African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics. He is also editor of Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media and coeditor of African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space and Intellectual Traditions of African Literature, 1960–2015.