Feven Cofré Eyob

Feven Eyob is a London-based anthropologist and spoken-word artist. Holding a BA in African Studies and Anthropology and an MRes in Social Anthropology, Feven is continuing into doctoral research as a PhD student at SOAS, University of London.

Currently, Feven is researching virtual classrooms for Tigrinya philology and linguistics to understand how students and teachers engage in identity reclamation. Her research interests lie in the intersection of African diasporic identities, language and the pathways forged by digital communities, who cultivate ancestral knowledge that is rooted in empowering Blackness. Memory Studies and Black Feminist thought are formative in Feven’s understanding of this nexus, as this work traces how exiled Eritreans in the diaspora and people in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia form solidarities in online spaces dedicated to culture and history. Her research seeks to investigate the ways that participants frame their gatherings and education in their mother tongue as forms of direct action; to remedy the enduring generational ruptures caused by conflict, genocide, and forced displacement concentrated across the Eritrea-Ethiopia borderlands.

By combining participant observation, digital ethnography, and ethnographic poetry, Feven works collaboratively with fellow students and elders in her fieldsite to produce research that responds to the needs of this online community. The next four years will be geared towards collectively coalescing a nuanced account of counter-memory practices in these digital worlds and to consider how virtual classrooms for learning Tigrinya linguistics function simultaneously as pedagogy, archive, and a medium for repair.