NRF Rated Researchers

Research Profile

Irikidzayi Manase

Irikidzayi Manase is rated by the National Research Foundation as an Y2 researcher. He is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe, University of Natal and University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 2003, Irikidzayi graduated with a Masters of Arts in English Studies from the University of Natal, having examined the way the Southern African cities are mapped in selected South African and Zimbabwean fiction. His PhD in English Studies, read at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, from 2003-2006, focused on the literary and cultural imaginings of fictional Johannesburg from 1978 to 2003. He graduated with a PhD in English Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in March 2007. He joined the department of English at the University of Venda in November 2007 and teaches postcolonial studies, literary research methods and Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He has attended a number of local and international conferences, summer schools and workshops, where he has read papers on research topics that include: the imaginings of urban life and popular cultures in Southern Africa; South African literature; the imaginaries on the land; science fiction and cyberculture; and the intersection between literature, politics, the media and technology. Irikidzayi is one of the 2010-2011 recipients of the American Council of Learned Societies’ (ACLS) Africa Humanities Programme (AHP) Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship is for the study and completion of a monograph project examining the literary and cultural representations of the land invasions in post-2000 Zimbabwe. He has reviewed articles for the journal: English Academy. He is also a member of the Association of Non-fiction Authors of Southern Africa (ANFASA), the English Academy, the Centre for the Development of Social Sciences Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the Post-colonial Studies Association and is a registered researcher with the Britain-Zimbabwe Society. His current research projects are interdisciplinary in nature and focus on: the literary and cultural imaginings of urban lives and cultures in Africa; the everyday use of technology and the mediation of identities in Southern Africa; the status of cyberculture and science fiction in South Africa; and the contestations over the imaginaries of land, politics, culture and identities in post-2000 Zimbabwe. 

Peer reviewed Publications

• “Johannesburg during the transition in the work of Ivan Vladislavic’s “The WHITES ONLY Bench” and The Restless Supermarket.”  The English Academy Review 26 1 May 2009: 53-61.
• “Zimbabwe Urban Grooves and their extra subversive performance discourse” Social Dynamics 35 1 March 2009: 56-67.
• “Ranka Primorac. The Place of Tears: The Novel and politics in Modern Zimbabwe.” Social Dynamics 33 2 December 2007: 247-252.
• ‘From Jo’burg to Jozi: Place and Pleasure in the new Johannesburg.” Scrutiny 2 10 2 2005: 116-128.
• “Making Memory: Stories from Staffrider Magazine and ‘testing’ the Popular Imagination.” African Studies 64 1 2005: 55-72.
• “Mapping the City Space in Current Zimbabwean and South African Fiction.” Transformation 57 2005: 88-105.