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Jumoke Verissimo

Dr. Jumoke Verissimo

Assistant Professor
DepartmentEnglish
EducationEducation BA (Lagos State University), MA (University of Ibadan) and PhD (University of Alberta)
Areas of ExpertisePoetry, Fiction, Non-fiction, and Cross-genre Narrative; African Literary Criticism, Afro-Canadian Literature, and Black Diasporic Studies; Memory Studies, Traumatic Affect, Digital Humanities, Postcolonialism, and the Poetics of the Ellipsis; Research-Creation, Interdisciplinary Focus and Decolonializing Knowledge

Biography:

Jumoke Verissimo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research and teaching span Global, African, and Afro-Canadian Literatures, with a specific focus on the intersections of Black Diasporic studies, memory studies, and traumatic affect. As a leading scholar-practitioner, her work explores the possibilities of research-creation and decolonial methodologies in uncovering obscured histories.

Dr. Verissimo is a globally recognised author of several acclaimed works, including her most recent poetry collection, Circumtrauma (Coach House Books), which employs a research-creation methodology to explore the silences of the Nigeria-Biafra War. Her previous publications include two poetry collections, I am memory and The Birth of Illusion; the children’s book Aduke and the Moon’s Hidden Secret; and the novel A Small Silence, which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Edinburgh Festival First Book Award, and won the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Sòròsókè, a critical record of activism against police brutality in Nigeria.

She is currently engaged in several projects that further examine the theoretical and creative dimensions of memory and ellipsis. This includes ongoing work, Home Relations (a project that examines the critical role of “archival invisibility” in the 19th-century Afro-Brazilian return movement in West Africa), a new novel and an essay collection titled Elliptical Imaginings, in which she theorises the ellipsis as a conceptual framework for navigating the gaps and "silences" inherent in Black ancestral narratives. Her broader scholarship continues to contribute to African literary criticism and the development of restorative research practices within the humanities.