Stella Nyanzi: A digital biography

Authors

  • Benedetta Lanfranchi University of Bayreuth

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/11895

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the volume’s focus on exploring intellectual biographies in African studies with a biographical sketch of Ugandan intellectual and political activist Stella Nyanzi. In this chapter I propose a new biographical approach that I term “digital biography”, whereby online writings and activity make up the main biographical resource for the biographer. I illustrate this approach through my own digital biography of Stella Nyanzi that has consisted in organizing select, online texts (mainly Facebook posts and Tweets) written over ten years, into a coherent literary corpus, which I have thematically divided into three chronological periods: grief and growing activism (2014-2016); trials, arrests and prison (2017-2019) and running for office and exile (2020-2024). In this chapter I draw on this digital archive, as well as on three other research sources: an extended interview I conducted with Stella in October 2022 in Ferrara, Italy, a short film I made of Stella together with Juri Mazumdar of Juri & Aki films, which was shot in Munich in November 2023, and her published poetry book No Roses from My Mouth (2020). I draw on these sources to paint a biographical sketch of one of the most influential figures in Uganda’s contemporary political history, showing how her personal and professional experiences have informed her politics, as well as her intellectual and poetic production.

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Author Biography

Benedetta Lanfranchi, University of Bayreuth

Benedetta Lanfranchi is a Researcher at the University of Bayreuth under the European Research Council Consolidator Grant ‘Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy.’ She is also Adjunct Assistant Professor at the American University of Rome (AUR), where she teaches ethics, political thought and international relations theory. She is author of Acholi Philosophies of Justice. Responsibility in Times of Collective Suffering and co-editor of Critical Conversations in African Philosophy: Asixoxe—Let’s Talk.

Benedetta can be contacted at:

benedettalanfranchi83@gmail.com

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Published

2025-05-18

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 2 (2025): Investigating intellectual biographies in African studies

Section

Intellectual biographies and philosophies through digital writing and film

License

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