Scholars invited to a Festschrift honouring Hope Eghagha

By Editor

SCHOLARS, researchers, creative writers and cultural critics have been invited to submit papers for a forthcoming festschrift in honour of Professor Hope Eghagha, a distinguished scholar, playwright, columnist and public intellectual. The volume, titled “From the Margins to the Imaginations: Reimagining Contemporaneity in the Creativity of Hope Eghagha,” is being organised to celebrate Eghagha’s contributions to African drama, poetry, prose, literary criticism, public intellectualism and higher education administration in Nigeria.

According to the 5-man Editorial Committee, led by Dr. Promise, the commemorative volume will provide a platform to reflect on, critique and expand scholarly discourse around themes that have defined Eghagha’s intellectual and creative work.

The call describes Eghagha as a profound scholar at the University of Lagos, an impactful columnist for The Guardian and a dedicated public servant whose work cuts across the creative arts and public policy, inspiring generations of African thinkers. Some of his fiction works are The Oily Marriage, Two Mothers and a Son, Pepper in My Throat, Rythms of the Last Testament, among others.

The proposed collection of academic essays will examine Eghagha’s work and its wider implications through several sub-themes, including the aesthetics of the non-literary, foreshadowing performance traditions, margins to imaginations in public discourse, orality, memory and language ecology, the public intellectual, pedagogy and theory, stylistics and rhetoric in public discourse and sociolinguistics, identity and language ecology.

The Editorial Committee said the volume seeks well-researched and unpublished scholarly papers that engage critically with the intellectual, literary and cultural dimensions of Eghagha’s work and the broader theoretical frameworks evoked by his creative and scholarly contributions.

Under the submission guidelines, contributors are required to submit a 200-word abstract accompanied by a brief biographical note of not more than 100 words. Submissions are to be sent to the editorial team via email at poadiele@mtu.edu.ng.

The language of submission is English, while contributors are expected to adopt either MLA or APA formatting. Completed papers are expected to be between 6,000 and 8,000 words.

The call lists October 30, 2026, as the deadline for abstract submissions, while the full paper submission deadline is May 30, 2027. The flyer gives December 2027 as the notification of acceptance date.

Further inquiries may be directed to the coordinating editors through poadiele@mtu.edu.ng. The listed contacts are Dr. Promise Adiele, Dr. James Onyeashi, Dr. John Uwa, Dr. Sola Ogunbayo and Dr. Adepoju.

The Festschrift is expected to bring together scholarly engagements with the diverse dimensions of Eghagha’s career, particularly his contributions to literature, performance, public discourse, intellectual life and higher education in Nigeria.