Gift Iyioku

Gift Iyioku is a scholar of German Studies and political thought whose work sits at the intersection of literary studies, political philosophy, and contemporary policy. She holds a Ph.D. in German Studies with a minor in Political Science from Stanford University, where she was supervised by Russell Berman, and a Master’s degree in German Literature from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Her undergraduate training in European Studies with a major in German was completed at the University of Ibadan.

Her dissertation, Autobiography as Political Thought: African Life Writing and the Limits of Recognition in Germany, examines autobiographical writing by authors of African descent in Germany as an active site of political theory rather than mere personal testimony. Reading authors including Luc Degla, Chima Oji, Nura Abdi, and Sharon Dodua Otoo, and building on the political and critical frameworks of W.E.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, and Dirk Göttsche, amongst others, the project reframes life writing as a form of political intervention within the German public sphere.

Iyioku was a 2022 EDGE Fellow at Stanford and went on to mentor incoming EDGE Fellows in 2024. She served as a Student Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2024 and as a Student Research Analyst in 2025, where her research focused on African governance, US-Africa relations, and great-power competition on the African continent. She was honored with Stanford’s Centennial Teaching Assistant Award from the School of Humanities and Sciences in 2026. She will join the Hoover Institution as a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow beginning in September 2026.