Prof. Tom Michael Mboya
BA, MPhil, DPhil (Moi)
The Academic Coordinator of the Moi University African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Moi–ACC), Tom Michael Mboya, is a Moi University-trained (BA, MPhil, DPhil) Professor of African Literatures and Cultures. He mainly researches the culture of the Luo of Kenya, focusing on popular music which he uses as a lens through which to perceive the complex social and political movements and relationships in the African postcolony from below. An important second area of Mboya’s research is East African Literature in English. Mboya’s most recent book is the monograph Popular Music, Ethnicity and Politics in the Kenya of the 1990s: Okatch Biggy Live! at “The Junction” (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019). His scholarly articles have been published in Swahili Forum, Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies, Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society, Social Dynamics, Journal of African Cultural Studies; Postcolonial Text; Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa; Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies; The Nairobi Journal of Literature: the Journal of the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi; Chemchemi: International Journal of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; The Egerton Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education and Maarifa: A Journal of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Mboya is, also, a published poet and an award–winning short story writer. In addition, he publishes extensively in the Kenyan mass media. From June to September 2013 he had a weekly column, Snapshots, which ran in the Sunday Standard – a newspaper that has a nationwide circulation in Kenya. Mboya is a former Director of Academics at the Moi University Odera Akang’o Campus College. Before that he was Head of Department, Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies of Moi University. He has held Visiting Faculty positions at The University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and University of Bayreuth, Germany.