Stella Nyanzi

Stella Nyanzi is a multiple award-winning knowledge producer who is currently a stipendiatin of the Writers-in-Exile program of PEN Zentrum Deutschland, and a fellow of Center for Ethics and Writing co-organised by Bard College and PEN America. She obtained her PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2009) based on ethnographic fieldwork research about youth sexualities in The Gambia. She also has a Master of Science degree in Medical Anthropology from University College London (1999) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication and Literature from Makerere University (1997). Her current research specialisation is in the multidisciplinary sub-fields of Queer African Studies, African Feminism, Critical Masculinity Studies, Dissidence Studies, and sexual and reproductive health rights. She has many academic peer-reviewed scholarly publications in journals and edited book volumes. She is also a poet with published poetry collections including “No Roses From My Mouth: Poems from Prison” (2020), “Don’t Come in My Mouth: Poems that Rattled Uganda” (2021), and “Eulogies of My Mouth” (2022). Twice she was arrested, charged and tried for cyber harassment and offensive communication against the president because of her poems published on her personal social media platforms. She was convicted to eighteen months in maximum security prison because of a poem in which she criticises the president of Uganda. Furthermore, she is a social justice activist whose organisation, participation and leadership of activism intersects women’s rights, LGBTIQA+ rights, labour rights, free expression and academic freedom, digital democracy, civil and political rights, among others – specifically in Uganda and Africa more broadly. Moreover, she is an engaged politician belonging to Uganda’s opposition political party called the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). She contested in the 2021 national elections for the position of Woman of Parliament for Kampala District constituency.