Sarah Jilani

Dr Sarah Jilani is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London, specializing in Anglophone postcolonial literatures and film from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. She is affiliated with the Department of English within the School of Arts and Social Sciences and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, an MSt from the University of Oxford, and a BA from the University of York.

• PhD, English, University of Cambridge (2017–2021)
• MSt, English (1900–Present), University of Oxford (2012–2013)
• BA (Hons), English and Related Literature, University of York (2009–2012)

Her research explores literary and cinematic representations of subjectivity, racialization, political consciousness, anti-colonial resistance, and decolonization. She has secondary interests in liberation psychology, the aesthetics of Third World Marxisms, and Southern urbanism. Her work is deeply informed by the psycho-political thought of Frantz Fanon, particularly in examining how post-independence narratives reflect the unfinished project of decolonizing the mind.

Her recent publications span topics such as neocolonialism in West African cinema, gendered war historiography in Buchi Emecheta’s work, and liminality in feminist film adaptations of Medea. Her 2024 monograph Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film (Edinburgh University Press) synthesizes these themes across African and South Asian texts from the 1950s to 1980s. Her scholarship appears in leading journals including Textual Practice, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Interventions.

• 2021 BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker

Dr Jilani has contributed to public discourse through freelance writing for The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, and ArtReview, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4. She welcomes collaborations with researchers and industry practitioners in literature, art, and film. She has previously held teaching and supervisory roles at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge, and has presented her research at international conferences on postcolonial studies, digital humanities, and film.