News

Following a brief transition period at the start of the Cluster’s second funding phase, the Fellowship Programme is gathering pace again. Over the coming two semesters, 21 scholars and artists will join the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence in Bayreuth, bringing new perspectives to its research agenda on world-making.

With the beginning of the winter semester, the first members of the 2026/27 Fellowship cohort are arriving at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies. It is the seventh cohort since the start of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and the first to take up their Fellowships during the Cluster’s second funding phase.

After a short break connected with the transition to Africa Multiple 2.0, the programme is now moving ahead again at full speed. A total of 21 Fellows will spend time in Bayreuth over the winter and summer semesters, bringing with them research projects and artistic work from a wide range of disciplines and regional contexts.

Among the first Fellows arriving this autumn are Dr Lukiko Vedastus Lukiko, Dr Ihuoma Okorie, Dr Michelle Clarke, Prof. Okorie Albert, Dr Siaka Traoré and Dr Kseniya Oksamytna. They will be joined by the two Artist Fellows Elnathan John and Richie Musambasi, with further members of the cohort arriving during the summer semester.

The Cluster's Fellowship Programme

The Fellowship Programme is a central part of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, which has been part of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence since 2019. International Fellows usually spend between one and five months in Bayreuth. During this period, they pursue their own research while becoming part of the Cluster’s academic community and contributing to its various research structures and activities. Fellows work closely with one of the six Research Sections, and may take part in lectures, seminars, discussion groups, conferences, summer schools and doctoral training, as well as develop new formats for public engagement, knowledge transfer and teaching.

Each Fellow is supported by an academic host from within the Cluster. The host provides a point of contact and helps connect the Fellow with relevant researchers, Research Sections and other activities in Bayreuth. Fellow lectures, for example, are organised in consultation with the respective academic host and are often embedded in existing research colloquia or Research Section meetings.

The Fellows pursue individual projects, but these are closely connected to the research agenda of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. In its second funding phase, Africa Multiple places world-making from the vantage point of Africa at the centre of its research programme. One of the main objectives is to study multiple, relational and reflexive processes of world-making as they pertain to Africa, and to rethink how worlds are made, unmade and co-constituted from African perspectives.

The Fellowship Programme therefore brings additional perspectives into into the empirical, ethical and epistemological dimensions of world-making. With Fellows working across different disciplines, regional contexts and methodological approaches, their projects contribute to debates that also resonate with the Cluster’s three core concepts of multiplicity, relationality and reflexivity, as well as with its six Research Sections: Accumulation, Digitalities, Ecologies, In/Securities, Re:membering and Translating.

Artist Fellowships add another dimension to this exchange as they bring writers, visual artists, musicians and other practitioners into dialogue with academic research. Artists and scholars collaborate on formats ranging from exhibitions and lecture performances to other forms of public engagement and knowledge transfer, creating space for experimentation and for exploring different ways of producing and sharing knowledge.

With 21 Fellows expected over the 2026/27 academic year, the seventh cohort marks a substantial new start for the Fellowship Programme in Africa Multiple 2.0 and brings a broad range of new voices into the Cluster’s research community.

For more info on the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies as well as its fellowship programme please click here.