PROF JENNIFER BAJOREK

BA English, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; PhD in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, California (USA).

Dr Bajorek is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Visual Studies at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts (USA). Prior to teaching at Hampshire, Bajorek was Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London (United Kingdom). In 2026, she will be Belknap Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Jennifer Bajorek teaches and does research at the intersection of literature, photography, and contemporary art. She has a particular interest in colonial aftermaths in French and Francophone worlds, and many of her projects have a cultural and geographic focus on contemporary Africa. She has published and taught widely on African photographic archives and decolonial historiography, Francophone (European, African, Caribbean) literature and film, and on topics in contemporary art and African and African diaspora art history. Her work also includes translation, curating, and diverse forms of collaboration.

Bajorek’s research and curatorial projects have been supported by fellowships or grants from numerous foundations and institutions including the Mellon Foundation, the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Exchange, the Clark Art Institute, and the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris. She was a recipient of an Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a Millard Meiss Publication Fund Award from the College Art Association; and, most recently, the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award for excellence in scholarship on African and African diaspora arts, from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA), for her 2020 book, Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa (Duke University Press). Her current research investigates aesthetic and political dimensions of im/migration, with a focus on artists, writers, and activists drawing on African migration and labor histories, undocumented workers’ movements, and anti-colonial archives in both Europe and West Africa.

Prof Jennifer Bajorek joined VIAD in 2013.