Boneace Chagara

Boneace Chagara, PhD, is a Kenyan literary and film scholar. He earned a PhD in African Studies from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, through a DAAD Research Fellowship. He holds an MA (in Theater and Film Studies) and a BEd (Arts—Literature) from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. His current research explores how narratives of lived experience shape our understanding of the natural, cultural, and conceptual world—across literature, screen media, and philosophy. Rooted in global, postcolonial, and decolonial perspectives, this interdisciplinary work approaches film, literature, curatorial work and exhibitions, etc., as sites and practices of ontological experimentation. His ongoing postdoctoral study examines silence—often perceived as absence or passivity—as a critical mode of resistance, remembrance, and reclamation. It seeks to understand how silence is mobilized across heritage discourses, curatorial practices, and restitution debates, as well as within broader decolonial and philosophical frameworks.

Previously, he collaborated on archival re-enactment workshops led by Fictilis—a New York-based independent art and curatorial studio—under the auspices of The Whole Life Academy Project in Dresden (Japanese Palais and Lipsiusbau). The project was organized in collaboration with the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, and the Pina Bausch Foundation. It explored interdisciplinary methodologies and research questions based on objects from the Archive of the Avant-Garde (AdA). He also taught and supervised students at various institutions of higher learning, both in Germany and in Kenya. His teaching and research interests include: global (im)mobilities; cinematic modernism; post-national cinema; experimental and festival cinema; cultures of critique; transient narratives and subjectivity; postcolonial and decolonial theories; screen media affect; cultural memory, material heritage, and restitution; museology; cultural archives and ontologies; curatorial theory and practice; the poetics and politics of exhibition.

Publications (selections):

• “The Unavowable Body: Radical Stillness in Mina Heidari’s Ineffable Art Series,” Journal of Creative Perspectives (2025).
• "‘The Happy Valley’: Temporalized Spatiality in Michael Radford’s White Mischief (1987)," Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies (2024).
• "Transient narratives in contemporary Nairobi cinema (2000-2020)," Humboldt University of Berlin (2023).
• “Subjecthood and Nationhood in Bob Nyanja’s Malooned" in Reimagining Kenyan Cinema, eds. Charles Kebaya and Christopher Joseph Odhiambo, (New York: Peter Lang, 2022).
• "Transient Figures and Moral Ambiguity in Kenya’s Fugitive Cinema" in Reimagining Kenyan Cinema, eds. Charles Kebaya and Christopher Joseph Odhiambo, (New York: Peter Lang, 2022).

Contact
Dr. Boneace Chagara
African Studies
[email protected]