Sr Dominica Dipio

Sr Dominica Dipio is a full professor of literature and film and a former Chair of the Department of Literature at Makerere University. She is a distinguished researcher and scholar. Some of the fellowships and academic awards associated with her are: The East African Commonwealth Fellowship, Fulbright, African Humanities Program (AHP), Cambridge-Africa Programme for Research Excellence (CAPREx), the Research Innovation Fund (Makerere), and the Leadership Academy – HERS-SA. A Humanities scholar Dipio has over 60 publications in her interdisciplinary research interests in: literature, film, folklore, ritual, popular culture, audience, and gender studies. In her researches, the dialogue between the city and the village, the old and the new, the past and the present, gender and the voices from the margins are often palpable. She is a filmmaker with a wide juror experience having participated at several international, regional and local film festivals such the Berlinale (Germany), Milan (Italy), Amiens (France), the Federation of Pan-African Filmmakers (FESPACO, Burkina Faso), and the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF). Dipio has, and continues to be instrumental to the development of the Uganda Film industry, particularly in her role as a juror since the inception of the Uganda Film Festival (UFF) in 2013, and as a Chair of the Content Support Development Program (CSDP), initiated by the Uganda Government to support the budding film industry through the Uganda Communication Commission since 2021. Dipio has served on the Pontifical Council for Communication; and currently she is a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture and Education.

Among Dipio’s significant and completed research collaborations are the following: the Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU) titled, “The Role of Ugandan Folklore as Repository of Traditional Wisdom”, where she was the Principal Investigator (PI). This research collaboration resulted in several individual and collegial publications, and the training of graduate students. She was part of the “Ubuntu Colloquium” research group that involved scholars from South and East Africa, and generated publications on the practice of Ubuntu from diverse African perspectives. In a recently concluded Mellon Foundation funded project in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences that focused on Historicizing and Rethinking the Humanities Knowledge Production, to mark 100 years of Makerere University’s existence, Dipio was part of the team that produced a significant book on the topic. She was involved as a Co-PI in a recently completed (2024) Mellon Foundation colloquium research. This collaborative research focuses on culture and the arts in contemporary African urbanism and its hinterlands; and it foregrounds the cities of Accra, Cape Town, Kampala, Johannesburg/Pretoria, and Nairobi. PhDs and early careers scholars are the beneficiaries. Her ongoing research interest is in the adaption of Ugandan (African) folktales into animation films for children’s educational and leisure needs.

Dipio has served on several prestigious academic boards, such as on the Advisory Board of the Journal of African Cultural Studies (JACS), under the Taylor and Francis publication; the editorial board of the Journal of African Cinema (JAC); and the Mashariki: Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies Conference. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the African Humanities Association (AHA), having served for several years as a mentor and assessor for the African Humanities Program (AHP) fellowship applications; Other non-academic Boards she has served on are the Communications Commission Board of the Uganda Episcopal Conference of Uganda; the National Content Support Development Program (CSDP); The Cross Culture Foundation (CCFU); and the WIZARTS Foundation. She is as well one of the very few persons from Africa appointed to the Dicastery (Department) of Culture and Education as consultants. The role of this Body is to advise the pope on matters of culture and Education, globally.