Associate Professor Tony Simoes da Silva
B.A. (Hons) (ECU Perth), PhD (UWA Perth)
Email: tonys@uow.edu.au
Telephone: 61 (02) 4221 5898
Location: 19:2054
- Associate Professor in Transcultural Studies
- Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and FEC Chair
Tony Simoes da Silva joined the University of Wollongong in July 2007, after a period at James Cook University, Australia (2005-07) and at the University of Exeter, in the UK (2000-05). He has held short-term contracts at the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University (1998-2000).
His research focuses on contemporary world literature in English and Portuguese, with a particular focus on southern African and Nigerian writing, and more broadly on Afro-diasporic cultures. It traces migration flows ranging from the slave trade to the mass displacement of peoples in the present, and their impact on contemporary cultural production. It examines questions of identity and belonging, place and self against nationalism, civil conflict, physical and cultural displacement and the haunting presence of history in the individual psyche.
His current research examines representations of refugees in literary fiction and considers the role such works play in creating and redefining a ‘refugee identity’, and the figure of the refugee as a key agent in global discourses of displacement, nationalism, belonging and hospitality. The work considers also the likely impact of literature in the development of public policy through its deployment of affect and empathy.
Research interests
- Anglophone Postcolonial Writing and Postcolonial Theory;
- Twentieth century literature (Africa, Australian; British; US);
- Trauma, Politics and Literature;
- Displacement, emotion and literature, especially refugees and writing;
Tony Simoes da Silva is happy to discuss proposals for postgraduate supervision in most of the above areas. Initial enquiries may be directed to him but decisions about supervision are made by the Faculty’s Head of Postgraduate Studies.
Teaching
- AUTUMN 2013: ENGL366 Black Writing from Africa, the US and the Caribbean
- SPRING 2013: ENGL376 The Romantics
- Occasional lectures in ENGL120, ENGL131, HIST107, INTS100.
- Honours and Special Topic supervisions
Governance
- Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Chair of the Education Committee in the Faculty Arts
- Standing Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts
- Chair of the FEC Chairs’ Committee
- Member of the UOW Senate
- Member of the UOW Education Committee
- Member of the UOW Standards and Quality Subcommittee (SAQS)
- Member of the UOW Learning Engagement & Support Subcommittee (LESS)
Selected Publications
Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date
Books
- 2000 The Luxury of Nationalist Despair: The Fiction of George Lamming. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi.
Work in progress
- Narrating a White Africa: Life Writing, History and Identity; monograph on South African life writing.
Journal issues
2012
- Editor, with Brigitta Olubas, JASAL 12.3 (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature)
2011
- Editor, with Anne Collett. “Dissenting Lives”, Life Writing, Vol. 8.3.
- Editor, with Frances Devlin-Glass, Annual issue of JASAL 11 (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature).
- Editor, with Gaetano Rando, Lidia Bilbatua and Henri JeanJean La Questione Meridionale (The Southern Question), Vol. 1.2.
Contributions to books
- 2013 ‘Representational Waste’: Refugees, Writing and Affect in this ‘restless epoch’. In Vanishing Borders in the Age of Globalism: Australasian Perspectives. Ed. Cynthia Vanden Driesen and T. Vijay Kumar, India, Sun Books.
- 2012 “Under New Management: Whiteness in Post-Independence Africa”. Locating Life Stories: Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)Biographical Studies, ed. Craig Howes and Maureen Perkins, Hawaii University Press. 83-94
- 2012 “Globalised Cartographies of Being: Literature, Refugees and the Australian Nation”. In Liberalism and Displacement: Comparative Research from the Asia Pacific, Ed. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Ashgate.
Refereed articles
- 2012 “Embodied Genealogies and Gendered Violence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Writing”, African identitits.
- 2011 “The Chief Taxidermist has left the Museum”. Wasafiri, 68.3, 63-68
- 2011 “Longing, Belonging and Self-Making in Zimbabwean Life Writing: Peter Godwin’s When a Crocodile Eats the Sun”, LiNQ, Volume 38.
- 2011 “Dissenting Voices”, with Anne Collett; Life Writing, 8.4, 351-359
External Professional work
- Dicionário Terminológico de Crítica Literária Pós-Colonial, Coordinated by Dr. Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia, of the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, in collaboration with the University of Roskilde, Norway
- Advisory Board, Partial Answers: A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas.
- Advisory Board, LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland)
- BA Advisor (English Studies), Avondale College (2009-)
Research students
Graduated
- Hujuala Rika Ayu (MA Res., Co-supervisor) 2011
- Ingeborg van Teeseling (PhD, Co-supervisor) 2011
Current
- Mustafa Mohammed Ali (MA Res, Co-supervisor)
- Marianella Braithwaite (MA Res., Co-supervisor)
- Azadeh Davachi (PhD, Co-supervisor)
- Ida Puspita (MA Res., Co-supervisor)
- Dan Huang (Rachel) (PhD, Co-supervisor)
- Lisa McLaughlin (MA Res., Co-supervisor)
- Peta Sladek (PhD, Co-supervisor)
- Mostafa Azizpour Shoobie (PhD, Co-supervisor)
- Daniel Swinton (MA Res, Co-supervisor)
Languages
- Portuguese—Native fluency
- French — fluent
- Italian / Spanish —Reading / Speaking comprehension level


