Professor Stephanie Newell FBA
- Fellow type
- International Fellow
- Year elected
- 2025
- Honours
- FBA
Summary
Stephanie Newell is George M. Bodman Professor of English and Senior Fellow in International and Area Studies at Yale University. She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Birmingham.
Her research focuses on the cultural histories of printing and reading in Ghana and Nigeria, including spaces of creativity and resistance in colonial-era newspapers.
She is the author of many books and articles on these topics, including 'The Forger’s Tale: The Search for ‘Odeziaku’' (2006), 'The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa' (2013, finalist for the 2014 African Studies Association Best Book Prize) and 'Newsprint Literature and Local Literary Creativity in West Africa, 1900s–1960s' (2023, winner of the 2024 Gustav Ranis International Prize for Best Book and the 2025 ALA Book of the Year Award).
She has served as president of the African Studies Association of the UK and Professor Extraordinaire at Stellenbosch University, and is founding editor of the African Articulations monograph series. In 2016 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Anglia Ruskin University.