Dr. Chinasa Abonyi is a budding scholar in gender and environmental studies, specializing in eco-poetics and ecofeminist theorization of the environment and sustainability studies. Chinasa has attended many conferences and has published in both local and international journals including her 2022 article in AlterNative: Journal of Indigenous Peoples (SAGE). She is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Dr. Abonyi is also a poet whose first poem “Moribund” appeared in the 37th no of African Literature Today. She is a fellow of Ife Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) and a member of African Literature Association and the Association of the Study of Literature and Environment. Dr. Abonyi has won many grants and fellowship including the U-MAPS University of Michigan African Presidential Fellowship (2023), MIASA workshop grant for Advance Studies in Africa 2022 and ASLE membership and Travel grants 2023-2025. Dr. Abonyi is presently a postdoctoral fellow of MIASA at the University of Ghana, Accra. Her passion for decoloniality of knowledge and indigenous consciousness is foregrounded in her multidisciplinary approaches to the study of African oral narratives and modern literature.

MIASA Project:

Environmental pollution is a global phenomenon that affects all life forms including plants and animals, humans and especially women and children. One major cause of environmental pollution and degradation is oil exploration and this has been a major problem in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Literature of this region has been criticized from arrays of postcolonial perspectives of environmental injustice and economic marginalization of the Niger Delta people. My project is an ecofeminist and psychoanalytic evaluation of the images of life interconnections and the trajectory of oil pollution as represented in the poetry of Tanure Ojaide, Nnimmo Bassey, Ebi Yeibo and Ibiwari Ikiriko. From oral interviews and participant observation method, my study developed a rich background to trauma and ecofeminist engagement of women and the environment amidst militancy and other socio-political crises as depicted in the selected poems. This project demonstrates the implication of oil pollution on women, children and the none human of the Delta region. And I conclude that, there is nothing more tragic than dispossession and environmental estrangement which leads to women activism and ecological protest from trauma and the need for survival.

Selected Publications

Abonyi, Chinasa. (2022) “Indigenous Consciousness and Life Interconnections: An Ecofeminist Study of Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself and Ebi Yeibo’s A Song for Tomorrow”. AlterNative: International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. Vol. 18. (1). 46-53. (Web of Science)

Anya. E, Igwebuike, E. & Abonyi, Chinasa. (2021). “Deployment of Rhetorical and Literary Tropes in Ewa-ọma Festival Performances of Nkporo, South-East Nigeria”. Sage Open. April-June. Pp.1-12 (Web of Science)

Abonyi, Chinasa.,Ekwueme-Ugwu, C & Anya. E. (2021) “Dependency, Autonomy and Child Development in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” Ikenga: International Journal of the Institute of African Studies. Vol.22. No. 3. (Scopus).

Abonyi, Chinasa. (2016). “Beyond Masculinity, Women Activism in Conflict Resolution: A Study of Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood and Akachi Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones”. Nsukka Journal of Humanities. NJH.Vol.24, No.2. Pp. 88-96.

Abonyi, Chinasa. (2020). “Identifying the Woman, Gender as a Cultural Game in African Literature”. Africana World in Perspective. 2nd Ed. USA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. Pp. 437-447