Prof Nicki Hitchcott

Prof Nicki Hitchcott

Head of the School of Modern Languages

Professor of French and African Studies

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3636
Email
n.hitchcott@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 210
Location
Buchanan
Office hours
By appointment

 

Biography

I joined St Andrews in October 2016, having held a personal chair at the University of Nottingham. I attended a comprehensive school in Exeter before studying for my BA and PhD at UCL, and was the first person in my family to go to university.

Teaching

Honours modules: FR4161 Antillean Identities; FR4183 African Francophone Fiction; CO3020 Literature and Cultural Memory; CO4003 Issues in Cultural Studies; CO3021 Crossing the Mediterranean; CO4032 Bad Books; CO4031 Experiences of Exile; CO4030 Short Story.

Subhonours modules: FR2204 French Civilisation; FR2206 French Literature from 19th to 21st Centuries; CO1002 Staging the Political. 

Postgraduate: ML5002/21 Literary and Cultural Theory; MLitt Postcolonial and World Literatures (School of English); MSc International Development Practice (Graduate School). 

Research areas

I am a specialist in postcolonial literatures in French and English, particularly fiction from sub-Saharan Africa. Funded by the AHRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the RSE, my research has focused on West African women's writing, migrant fiction, fictional responses to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Belgian colonialism, and ecotexts.

I have published 12 books: 3 single-authored monographs, Women Writers in Francophone Africa (2000), Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration (2006), Rwanda Genocide Stories (2015) and 9 co-authored/co-edited volumes, along with over 50 articles and book chapters. My most recent co-edited book (with Nsah Mala, University of Cologne), Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere, was published in 2025 by Liverpool University Press.

I am currently working on a new project, 'Stories of the Mothers of Métis Children Stolen from the Belgium Empire' (with Alice Urusaro Karekezi, University of Rwanda, and John McInally). This project is funded by the RSE.

From 2015 to 2018, I led the AHRC-funded project, Rwandan Stories of Change in partnership with NGO the Aegis Trust and the Genocide Archive of Rwanda. In 2018, I was a finalist for the inaugural Wellcome Trust/AHRC Health Humanities Medal in the Category of Best International Research.

I have supervised 11 research degrees to successful completion on various aspects of postcolonial francophone studies, including African philosophy and women's documentary cinema, as well as African and Caribbean literature in French. Of my former doctoral students, 6 have permanent academic jobs (at Lancaster, Melbourne, Newcastle, Trinity College Dublin, UCL and University College Cork), two of them now professors. I warmly welcome enquiries from potential PhD students in any area of francophone postcolonial studies.

PhD supervision

  • Clara Defachel
  • Muhammad Rizwan
  • Sophie Vernon

Selected publications

 

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