Michael A. Bucknor

Michael A. Bucknor is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Global Studies & Decolonial Practice at the University of Alberta. Formerly, he was Chair of the Department of Literatures in English, Public Orator at the Mona Campus (University of the West Indies), and Chair of the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS). Awarded the 2018 and 2020 UWI Principal’s Award for Best Research Article, he also received the 2019 Institute of Jamaica’s Gold Musgrave Medal for Eminence in the field of Literature. He has adjudicated many literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and Jamaica’s Una Marson Prize. He currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of West Indian Literature. He carries out research on the African Diaspora, Austin Clarke, Caribbean-Canadian writing, Black Canadian cultural production, postcolonial literatures and theory, masculinities, sexualities, and popular culture. Widely published, his most recent publications include the book chapter, “Austin Clarke’s ‘Out-a-order Poetics,” in The Routledge Handbook on Black Canadian Literature (2024), the co-authored journal introduction, “’Leaving Traces’: Decolonial Hauntings and Affective Ecologies” JWIL (April 2025) (written with Aon UI Abideen), and the forthcoming monograph, Olive Senior, in The Caribbean Biography Series, UWI Press (2027).