Team > Prof. Dr. Alena Rettová

Faculty of Languages & Literatures
African and Afrophone Philosophies

Alena Rettová, has degrees in Philosophy, German Studies and African Studies as well as a PhD from the Charles University in Prague.

Her PhD research, working with texts in six African languages (Swahili, Shona, Ndebele, Lingala, Bambara, and Yorùbá), was published in 2007 as Afrophone Philosophies: Reality and Challenge. In 2013, she published a book monograph on Sando Marteau, a singer based in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she explored Sando Marteau’s sung poetry in Congolese Swahili as an expression of existentialist philosophy. Following a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bayreuth, Alena worked for 14 years at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London, where she taught Swahili literature and African philosophy. Alena joined the University of Bayreuth in April 2020. She is the Principal Investigator in the PhiGe project, where she focuses on the novel in African languages and contributes to the case study on Sufi poetry.

Faculty of Languages & Literatures
African and Afrophone Philosophies

Prof. Dr. Alena Rettová
Professor for African and Afrophone Philisophies

University of Bayreuth 
African and Afrophone Philosophies 
95440 Bayreuth 

E-mail: alena.rettova@uni-bayreuth.de