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Dr Sarah Jilani

Lecturer in English

School of Communication & Creativity Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries

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About

Overview

Dr Sarah Jilani is a Lecturer in English who teaches Anglophone postcolonial literatures and film from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. As a freelance writer on contemporary art, books and film, she regularly contributes to The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement and ArtReview amongst others, and appears on BBC Radio 4 as a 2021 BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Sarah's research interests include literary and cinematic explorations of subjectivity, racialisation, political consciousness, and anti-colonial resistance. She also has secondary interests in liberation psychology; the aesthetics of Third World Marxisms; and narrative representations of Southern urbanism. She has published on a range of related topics, from neocolonialism in West African cinema to Frantz Fanon's psycho-politics. Her monograph Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film (2024) is available from Edinburgh University Press.

Experienced, as part of her freelance journalism, in working with magazine editors, artists, galleries, and film curators, she welcomes contact from researchers and industry practitioners interested in exploring opportunities for collaboration.

Sarah was born and raised in Istanbul, and holds degrees in English from the universities of York (BA, 2012), Oxford (MSt, 2013) and Cambridge (PhD, 2021).

Qualifications

  • PhD, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, October 2017 - July 2021
  • MSt English (1900-Present), University of Oxford, United Kingdom, September 2012 - July 2013
  • BA (Hons) English and Related Literature, University of York, United Kingdom, September 2009 - July 2012

Employment

  • Lecturer, City, University of London, United Kingdom, September 2021 - present
  • 2021 New Generation Thinker, British Broadcasting Corporation (United Kingdom), United Kingdom, March 2021 - present
  • Associate Lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom, September 2019 - February 2020
  • Postcolonial and Related Literatures Paper Supervisor, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, January 2019 - July 2021
  • Dissertation Supervisor, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, September 2018 - July 2021
  • Literary translator (Turkish–English), Various, March 2017 - present
  • Freelance writer, Various, December 2014 - present

Memberships of professional organisations

  • Fellow, Royal Society of Arts, July 2025 - present

Languages

French (can read, write, speak, understand spoken) and Turkish (can read, write, speak, understand spoken, peer review)

Expertise

Geographic Areas

  • Africa
  • Asia - South Central
  • Middle East

Publications

Publications by category

Books (2)

  • DOVEY, L., TAYLOR-JONES, K. and THOMAS-PARR, G. (Eds.), (2026). Global Screen Worlds. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. ISBN 9798765126288.
  • Jilani, S. (2024). Subjectivity and Decolonisation in the Post-Independence Novel and Film. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781399507288.

Chapters (2)

Journal articles (12)

Professional activities

Keynote lecture/speech

  • From Decoloniality to Decolonisation: Subjectivity, Power and Struggle. Goldsmiths, University of London (2026). The Decolonial Network Annual Assembly 2026

Online articles (17)

Radio programmes (13)

  • Fanon's Psychopolitics & Empire's Anxiety w/ Sarah Jilani. Guerrilla History (2026). https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/fanons-psychopolitics-empires-anxiety-w-sarah-jilani
  • Political Visions. BBC Radio 4 (2025). What is the role of vision in politics? Must politicians have a vision of what kind of society they’re working towards, ultimately? What kind of role does this vision play in the day-to-day practice of working politicians? Or is this a misunderstanding of the nature of politics? We mark the anniversary of the landmark text of modern libertarianism, Anarchy, State & Utopia, by Robert Nozick. Anne McElvoy is joined by the politician Gisela Stuart, General Secretary of the Fabian Society Joe Dromey, and political philosophers Thomas Simpson and Jeffrey Howard. Plus, writer and lecturer Sarah Jilani on the case for revolution.
  • Common Sense. BBC Radio 4 (2025). What do we mean by 'common sense'? In 1925 the philosopher GE Moore wrote a Defence of Common Sense which argued against philosophical idealism, on the grounds that it seemed to deny a set of propositions that he claimed were indisputably true. His colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote a detailed response to Moore's paper, and its influence extended into the work of contemporaries like Susan Stebbing. How do we understand common sense now? What role does common sense play in politics? Matthew Sweet's guests are the philosopher Dr Rachael Wiseman, the politician Ann Widdecombe, the historian of emotion Dr Tiffany Watt Smith and the journalist and scholar of post colonial culture Dr Sarah Jilani.
  • Subjectivity and Decolonization in the Post-Independence Novel and Film w/ Sarah Jilani. Guerrilla History (2024). https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/subjectivity-and-decolonization-in-the-post-independence-novel-and-film-w-sarah-jilani
  • The Insurrectionists’ Guide to the Movies. BBC Radio 3 (2024). The Insurrectionists' Guide to the Movies looking at some of the latest releases at the cinema and what they say about our culture society and democracy today. Matthew Sweet speaks to Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush, Critic and historian Kate Maltby, film curator Keith Shiri, who has advised on a new Pan-African season at the British Film Institute called Tigritudes, and Dr Sarah Jilani - an expert in Anglophone postcolonial literature and world film.
  • Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, The Hague Congress. BBC Radio 3 (2024). 1,300 women met in The Hague in 1915 to discuss votes for women, human rights and the importance of peace. Jennifer Thomson shares her research into how this fed into the development of the women's movement and fed into organisations like the United Nations. Storm Jameson (1891-1986) was President of the English branch of PEN International during WWII and helped many writers flee war torn Europe. Katie Cooper has been reading her newly re-published autobiography Journey From the North. Sarah Maldoror (1929 −2020) is best known for her feature film Sambizanga which looked at the 1961–1974 war in Angola. New Generation Thinkers Alex Reza and Sarah Jilani discuss her film-making career. Shahidha Bari hosts.
  • East West artistic connections. BBC Radio 3 (2024). Dr Sarah Jilani talks to Dr Adam Sammut about Islamic influences in art by Peter Paul Rubens Rubens and Dr Nil Palabiyik looks at a Polish-Ottoman musical translator named Ali Bey
  • Writing exile and overcoming statelessness. BBC Radio 3 (2023). Around 3 million Bengali Pakistanis now live in Pakistan it is estimated and a research project has been exploring their experiences, mixing oral testimony and art projects with analysis of recent history. Humera Iqbal explains their findings to presenter Sarah Jilani.
  • Sankofa and Afrofuturism. BBC Radio 3 (2023). Ekow Eshun is curating an exhibition exploring the idea of Sankofa, taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present. Sarah Jilani teaches novels written by Ama Ata Aidoo (1942-2023) and Flora Nwapa (1931-1993). Sculptor Zak Ové is showing a work called The Mothership Connection as part of Frieze Sculpture display in London's Regents Park which brings together the form of a Pacific Northwest totem and a rocket with elements relating to African culture like tribal masks. They join Shahidha Bari for a conversation exploring African ideas about a better future.
  • Oral histories and the NHS. BBC Radio 3 (2023). Dr Sarah Jilani talks to Professor Stephanie Snow from the Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine University of Manchester and film maker Sara David
  • Idrissa Ouédraogo. BBC Radio 3 (2023). Burkinabé film-maker Idrissa Ouédraogo (21 January 1954 – 18 February 2018) was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival for his film Tilaï. Much of Ouédraogo's work deals with the tensions between rural and city life and tradition and modernity in his native Burkina Faso. Matthew Sweet is joined by Boukary Sawadogo who teaches cinema studies at City College of New York and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani.
  • Tales from the Garbage Hills. BBC Radio 3 (2023). Urbanisation, migration and ‘folk language’ are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its title – where ‘Berji’ conjures images of an innocent shepherdess and ‘Kristin’ of a sex worker. There’s blind old Güllü Baba, rumoured to cure the ills caused by a nearby factory’s chemical wastewater. There’s Fidan of Many Skills, rumoured to know all the ‘arts of the bed’. There’s the rumour of roads, jobs, and clean water coming to Flower Hill: they never materialise. In his foreword to Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, John Berger crowns ‘rumour’ its ultimate storyteller. New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani looks at the way the inhabitants of Flower Hill make sense of their disorienting transition from village life to shantytown in the story from one of Turkey's most influential female authors writing today.
  • African cinema, nationhood, and liberation. BBC Radio 3 (2022). Sarah Jilani looks at why independent Africa's first generation of film-makers were some of the fiercest critics of their new nations in films such as Mandabi and Finye.