Tessa van Wijk

Tessa van Wijk holds a bachelor’s degree in French Language and Culture (2022) from Radboud University Nijmegen as well as both a master’s (2023) and a research master’s (2025) degree in Literary Studies from the same university. During her time as a student at Radboud University, she worked as a student assistant for two Digital Humanities projects, MEDIATE and SHEWROTE, and as editorial assistant for Relief - Revue électronique de littérature française. As part of her research master’s programme, Tessa also conducted a research internship at Electronic Enlightenment (Centre for Digital Scholarship, Bodleian Libraries) during which she worked on eighteenth-century correspondence related to slavery.

Tessa’s research interests include French-language periodicals, feminism and (post)colonial literature. Her research master’s thesis, titled “‘Les prolétaires et les femmes sont des esclaves’. Discourses of subordination in French feminist periodicals from the 1830s”, examined the ways in which subordination on the basis of social class and race appear in a larger feminist discourse focused on the subordination of women. Tessa is currently a PhD student within the AFROPRESS ERC project (VUB), under the supervision of Prof. Cedric Van Dijck. Her project focuses on twentieth-century Congolese magazines.