Carli Coetzee is a South African-born scholar and Africanist, currently serving as a research associate at the African Studies Centre of the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on African literature, African popular cultural studies, and the ethics of knowledge production about and from Africa.
Education: Coetzee earned a Master's degree in Afrikaans literature in 1988 and a PhD in 1993, both from the University of Cape Town. Her Master's thesis was titled 'N Ondersoek na die aard van poësie, met verwysing na kinderpoësie en die "eenvoudige" poësie van N.P. van Wyk Louw en D.J. Opperman (An inquiry into the nature of poetry, with reference to children's poetry and the "simple" poetry of N.P. van Wyk Louw and D.J. Opperman). Her PhD dissertation was titled Writing the South African landscape.
Academic career: Coetzee has held academic positions at the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town, SOAS University of London, and Queen Mary University of London. She has also held fellowships at Harvard University and Wits University.
Editorship and professional roles: She served as the editor of the Journal of African Cultural Studies from 2011 to 2025, a journal with a stated commitment to publishing scholarship by Africa-based scholars. She is the founder of the Journal Work Academy. She has also served as president of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) and as Chair of the Lagos Studies Association Publications Committee.
Selected publications:
- Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (1998, co-edited with Sarah Nuttall)
- Accented Futures: Language Activism and the Ending of Apartheid (2013, Wits University Press)
- Afropolitanism: Reboot (2017, editor, Routledge)
- Routledge Handbook of African Literature (2019, co-edited with Moradewun Adejunmobi)
- Written Under the Skin: Blood and Intergenerational Memory in South Africa (2019, Boydell & Brewer / Wits University Press) — awarded the 2021 Book of the Year Award for Scholarship from the African Literature Association.
Activist work: Coetzee's editorial work is described as part of a broader activist project seeking to change publishing patterns that privilege northern-based scholars and institutions, and to support early-career researchers from the Global South.
