Chike Okoye, PhD is a Professor of Poetry and Postcolonial Literatures with special interest in Criticism and Cultural Studies. He is popularly known as “Ududo” (Spider). A former ASUU Vice Chairperson, former Head and Chair of English Department, Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, he was also the University Orator. He was appointed Dean and Director of the School of General Studies of Olivia University, Bujumbura, Burundi while on research leave there in 2022/23. Since his MA and PhD between 2000 and 2010, he has studied performance poetry from indigenous forms and has continued into the modern form of spoken word poetry in the postcolony.
A cultural aficionado, Chike Okoye has published extensively on the Igbo masquerade tradition and chants (as poetry) and has also ventured into the night-mask tradition. His interest in literary criticism has led to the propounding of two theories (“universalist relativism” and “praxiphonoaesthetics”) published in top-tier and highly reputable journals and is in the process of a third critical framework for the study of performative poetry. Promoted to the rank of full professor in 2019, he is on record as the quickest to have delivered his inaugural lecture of NAU, Awka (the 59th) in 2021 titled “The Ouroboros of the Poetic Form and the Vertiginous Postcolony” and had also delivered an inaugural of the GS Directorate of FUTO while on sabbatical there in 2018/19 titled “The Fluidity of the Igbo Space and Achebe’s Reconstructions”.
He is presently with the University of Munster, Germany as a Senior/Experienced Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation working on the research, “New Models and a Resurgent Art: Performance Poetry in Modern Nigeria”. He is widely published and belongs to numerous professional organizations.
Professor Chike Okoye is from Agulu, Anambra State of Nigeria, same town Peter Obi hails. He’s a versatile teacher and writer. His writings have inspired many and impacted society meaningfully.
He’s expected to return to Nigeria immediately he is done with the programme and allied services which may take him a period of one year in Germany to complete. He’s the first UNIZIK lecturer to have won this. He’s married with grown-up children. 
Professor Chike Okoye.
