معرفی
Rebecca Duncan is Associate Professor and Researcher in the Department of Languages at Linnaeus University, and member of the Linnaeus University Center for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies where she coordinates the research cluster for Ecology, Culture and Coloniality (ECCo). Her academic work bridges literary studies, postcolonial theory, and environmental humanities with a focus on Southern Africa.
Dr. Duncan holds degrees from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and Justus-Liebig University Giessen (Germany), which inform her interdisciplinary approach to literature and cultural studies.
Her research centers on postcolonial and world literature with particular emphasis on how 'speculative' genres mediate intersecting struggles for racial, gender and environmental justice. Duncan's work sits at the critical intersection of Gothic studies, ecocriticism, and decolonial theory, examining literary representations of ecological crisis, postcolonial trauma, and social justice movements. She analyzes how literature from the Global South engages with contemporary planetary challenges, particularly through the lens of what she terms 'speculative' forms that challenge conventional realist narratives.
Duncan's publication record shows a clear trajectory toward planetary-scale literary analysis, with recent work focusing on Globalgothic frameworks, Capitalocene narratives, and decolonial ecocriticism. Her scholarship increasingly addresses the intersection of ecological crisis with postcolonial conditions, particularly in African contexts, demonstrating how literature articulates responses to climate emergency within histories of colonial extraction and ongoing global inequality.
Her scholarly achievements have been recognized with significant honors:
- Shortlisted for the Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize (2019) for South African Gothic
- Winner of the Justin D. Edwards Prize (2024) for The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic
Duncan has secured substantial research funding as principal investigator for Resources and Energy in South African Literature, a three-year project funded by the Swedish Research Council. Her previous research has been generously supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2021-24) and the Crafoord Foundation (2020-21). She has supervised numerous MA theses in post- and decolonial literature, ecocriticism and literature and millennial politics, and currently co-supervises a PhD project on the World-Grotesque in contemporary literature.
As coordinator of ECCo, Duncan leads interdisciplinary work examining connections between climate emergency, global inequality, and pandemic effects. Her 'Materialising Violence' project considers representations of socio-economic and ecological violence in Sub-Saharan African fiction, while 'Young Southern Speculatives' identifies new eco-speculative literature written by young authors from the Global South that offers innovative decolonial perspectives on the Capitalocene.
