Emmanuel Kayembe

Emmanuel Kayembe is a Research Associate for Franco-American Studies and an Instructor of French & Latin. He earned his Ph.D. in French Language and Literature from the University of Cape Town, where he was a recipient of an Eric Abrahams Scholarship and a Golden Key International Honour Society Award for his outstanding achievement. He obtained a M.A. (Diplôme d’Études Approfondies) in French & Classics from the University of Lubumbashi. Before joining the University of Southern Maine in Fall 2018, Emmanuel has spent several years teaching Classics and French at the University of Lubumbashi from 1990 to 2009, French as a Foreign Language at the University of Cape Town from 2009 to 2011 and French as a Foreign Language, Francophone Literatures & Cultures at the University of Botswana from 2013 to 2017.

Former Research Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies (Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2012), he was selected to receive a grant of $ 18,000.00 to conduct research on the relationship between French and other languages in the African literary field. He has extensively published on Francophone literatures and cultures, including a study on Dany Laferrière, a Haitian-born Canadian author, who was inducted into the Académie Française in 2015. He is the author of a book on Pius Ngandu, a Francophone writer and a Professor of French at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. His research interests focus on the Global Francophonie and the North American and New England Francophonie. All along his career, he has been involved in several collaborative research projects about French language and Francophone literatures and cultures across the world. He secured funding for his research from reputable international organizations such as the Francophone University Agency (Montréal), the French Institute of South Africa (Johannesburg), and the Institute of International Education (New York). His regular participation in international conferences enables him to expand his boundaries and present the result of his research to colleagues from across the globe.