!!Daria Tunca 

!BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
I have a PhD from the University of Liège in Belgium (2008) and I currently work as an F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher in the English Department of the same institution. My research focuses on stylistic approaches to African literatures, with particular emphasis on contemporary Nigerian fiction. I have published articles and reviews in international journals such as the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Wasafiri, African Literature Today and Postcolonial Text. With Bénédicte Ledent, I have also edited a volume of essays about British-Caribbean writer Caryl Phillips (Rodopi, forthcoming).

!DETAILS OF RESEARCH
My research mainly concentrates on the exploration of stylistic phenomena in contemporary Nigerian fiction. More specifically, my doctoral thesis examined a selection of novels and short stories written by three diasporic authors: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gbenga Agbenugba and Ben Okri. The aim of this dissertation was to develop an eclectic methodology that reflected the stylistic diversity of the chosen texts. \\

In my postdoctoral work, I try to pursue some of the lines of research outlined in my thesis. In the context of my new project, I have put together a more extended corpus consisting of twenty-first-century novels and short stories written by Nigerian diasporic authors (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, and Chika Unigwe, among others), and I am attempting to analyse them combining theories from four different (sub)disciplines: postcolonial studies, systemic-functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and the philosophy of language. My hope is to investigate the possible synergies between these theoretical approaches and eventually develop an original model of stylistic analysis for Nigerian fiction, with possible extensions to other fields of literary research.

!KEY PUBLICATION REFERENCES 
* “An Ambiguous ‘Freedom Song’: Mind-Style in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus”, Postcolonial Text 5.1 (2009), pp. 1-18. Available online at the following address: http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/view/925/93

* “Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures: Preliminary Epistemological Considerations and a Case Study”, in Style and Structure in African Literature: Emerging Perspectives on Fiction, Drama and Orature, ed. by J. K. S. Makokha and John Obiero Ogone (Saarbrücken: VDM, forthcoming in 2010).