Ato Quayson

Ato Quayson is a Ghanaian-Canadian literary critic and the Jean G. and Morris M. Dolye Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Stanford University, where he is the inaugural chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. He was Chair of the Department of English from 2021 to 2023. He was formerly a Professor of English at New York University (NYU), and before that was University Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. He taught at the English Faculty of the University of Cambridge for a decade before moving to the University of Toronto. His writings on African literature, postcolonial studies, disability studies, urban studies and in literary theory have been widely published. He curates "Critic.Reading.Writing" on YouTube and is also host of "Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour" on Cambridge Core.

Quayson is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) the Royal Society of Canada (2013), and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He is also a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023). He was Chief Examiner in English of the International Baccalaureate (2005–07), and has been a member of the Diaspora and Migrations Project Committee of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK, and of the European Research Council award grants panel on culture and cultural production (2011–2017). He is a former President of the African Studies Association. Provided by Wikipedia