Naomi Nkealah is a lecturer of English in the Division of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She obtained her PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2011 and has since lectured at the University of Limpopo, University of South Africa and now University of the Witwatersrand. Her research specializes in the re-theorisation of African feminisms for contemporary African women and the exploration of representations of gender violence and women’s empowerment in African women’s literature. She has published widely on these subjects in South African journals, including English in Africa, English Academy Review, South African Theatre Journal and Journal of Literary Studies; international journals such as Research in African Literatures and ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature; as well as in edited books such as Globalization, Media and Popular Culture in Nigeria (Lagos: Bahiti & Dalila Publishers, 2016), Style in African Literature: Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012) and Performing Gender in Arabic/African Theater: Between Cultures, Between Gender (Amsterdam: Intercultural Theatre Series No 4, 2009). She currently holds an NRF rating in the category of Y1, positioning her as a leading emerging researcher in her field with great potential to becoming an internationally established scholar. As an academic, she presents papers at national and international conferences, supervises postgraduate students, reviews articles for journals and books for publishers, and examines theses and dissertations for various universities. In addition, she is the chief editor of Imbizo: International Journal of African Literary and Comparative Studies published by Unisa Press. She has won several awards, including the Most Resourceful Staff Member Award from the University of Limpopo (2013), the Golden Key Membership Award from the Golden Key Society (2012), and the DAAD Scholarship for Young Academics and Scientists (2009).
In August 2016 she received the Distinguished Young Woman Scientist Award – Humanities and Social Sciences Category – at the Women in Science Awards 2016 run by the Department of Science and Technology.