Danson Kahyana (2025)

Sylvester Danson Kahyana is a visiting professor in the English Department at Boston College. Previously, he was a Fellow at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy and Research, Harvard Kennedy School, having survived a brutal attack on his life on April 26, 2022. He holds a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University, South Africa (where he is an Associate Researcher in the English Department) and an MA and BA in Literature from Makerere University (where he was an Associate Professor in the Literature Department before he fled Uganda). Uganda’s contributing editor to Index on Censorship and a former board member of PEN International as well as a former President of Ugandan PEN, he has defended artistic freedom and human rights for over two decades. A published poet and anthologist, he has edited five books and published more than 30 scholarly papers. Some of the awards he has received include the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network Individual Award (2023), the Fulbright Research Fellowship Award (2021), and the American Council of Learned Societies’ African Humanities Postdoctoral Award (2015).

 Danson Kahyana will hold this fellowship as the Spring 2025 Cheuse Center Scholar from February 27 to March 8, 2025. This prestigious fellowship, supported by the Scholl Foundation, is dedicated to providing opportunities for writers at risk, offering them a space to create, reflect, and share their stories.