博埃默是牛津大学英文系世界文学教授,英国殖民与后殖民研究创始人,以英国文学中的帝国和反帝国研究享誉世界.同时,她也是一名作家.她还是牛津大学出版社的《牛津后殖民研究系列丛书》总编辑.在后殖民研究最初推介到中国时,许多中国学者就是通过她的著作《殖民与后殖民文学:移民隐喻》(1995)来认识后殖民研究的.本次采访包括两个部分,分别完成于新冠疫情爆发前和爆发高峰期,梳理了英国后殖民研究的一些关键议题,包括英国后殖民研究的历史、英国学者关注的核心问题、殖民与后殖民研究之间的关系、族裔和移民作家对当代英国文学发展的影响、后殖民研究的前景以及新冠疫情对该领域研究的影响等.博埃默教授始终认为“移民”是核心议题,强调后殖民研究中“跨界”,以及完善跨学科研究方法的重要性.“,”Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature at the English Department,University of Oxford.She is a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies,known intemationally for her research in Anglophone literatures of empire and anti-empire,while also being a novelist and short-story writer.She is the general editor of the book series,Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures (OUP).Many Chinese scholars came to understand the postcolonial studies through her book,Colonial and Postcolonial Literature:Migrant Metaphors (1995),when this field began to be introduced into China.This interview,conducted in two parts before and during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,addresses a number of important issues in postcolonial studies in the UK,such as the history of the postcolonial literary studies in Britain,the core issues the British scholars are currently concerning about,the relationship between colonial and postcolonial studies,the influence of the ethnic and immigrant writers on contemporary British literature,the prospects of the postcolonial studies,and the impact on it of the COVID-19 pandemic.While indicating“immigration” as the key topic all along,she emphasizes the importance of border-crossing in postcolonial studies and its methodological improvement on interdisciplinary studies.