Past conveners of the Colonial Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group (CPD)

Prof Mustapha Kamal Pasha (co-founder)

Aberystwyth University

Mustapha Kamal Pasha is Personal Chair in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, having been Sixth Century Chair and Head of International Relations at the University of Aberdeen since January 2006 and taught previously at the School of International Service, American University in Washington, DC. Mustapha served as Vice President of the International Studies Association in 2012-2013. His work is broadly located within Post-Western IR and draws from varied genealogies, notably decolonial thought, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, critical theory, and classical political economy (influenced by Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, and Subaltern Studies). His most recent book, International Relations and Islam: Fractured Worlds (Routledge) will be published in May 2017.

Dr Meera Sabaratnam (co-founder)

SOAS, University of London

Meera Sabaratnam is Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. Her research interests are in the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of world politics, in both theory and practice. She has worked on questions of decolonisation, Eurocentrism, race and methodology in IR. She has applied these concepts to the analysis of international development aid, peacebuilding and statebuilding, most recently in her book Decolonising Intervention (2017). Her regional interests are in Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean region. Currently she is working on questions of race in IR theory and a postcolonial historiography of the First World War. 

Prof Robbie Shilliam (co-founder)

Johns Hopkins University

Robbie Shilliam is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University. He researches the political and intellectual complicities of colonialism and race in the global order. He is co-editor of the Rowman & Littlefield book series, Kilombo: International Relations and the Colonial Question. His most recent publication, Decolonizing Politics, was published in 2021 by Polity Press. Over the past six years, Robbie has co-curated with community intellectuals and elders a series of exhibitions–in Ethiopia, Jamaica and the UK–which have brought to light the histories and significance of the Rastafari movement for contemporary politics. Based on original, primary research in British imperial and postcolonial history, this work now enjoys an online presence as a teaching aid: www.rastafari-in-motion.org. Robbie also works with Iniversal Development of Rastafari (IDOR) to retrieve histories of the Rastafari presence in Baltimore and Washington DC.

Dr Nivi Manchanda (2017-2021)

Queen Mary, University of London

Nivi Manchanda is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London since 2017. She has previously worked at the LSE and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She completed her PhD in 2014 from the University of Cambridge where her thesis – titled Imagining Afghanistan: the History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge Production - was awarded the Best PhD dissertation in the Arts and Social Sciences by Clare Hall. Her book, loosely based on this research, is now out with Cambridge University Press. Her research interests include post- and de-colonial theoretical approaches to the study of world politics. She is especially interested in the ways in which knowledge is produced and the raced, classed and gendered nature of both ‘expertise’ and ‘common-sense’. Although she doesn’t have a regional focus per se, she is especially interested in the United States’ imperial interventions in the name of the ‘War on Terror’. Her new research project is on the racialised nature of security both in its theoretical underpinnings and its political praxis.

Dr Kerem Nişancıoğlu (2017-2021)

SOAS, University of London

Kerem Nisancioglu is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Politics and International Studies, at SOAS, University of London. His research focuses on the relationship between Eurocentrism, capitalism, colonialism and race. His co-authored book (with Alexander Anievas) How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2015) explored these themes through an examination of the origins of capitalism. How the West Came to Rule was the winner of the BISA International Political Economy Group Annual Book Prize in 2016 and the Best Book Award of the International Political Sociology section of the ISA in 2017. Kerem’s current research focuses on the role of colonialism and racialisation in the making of modern sovereignty. He is also interested in practices of and struggles against capitalism, colonialism and racism in universities. He is the co-editor (with Gurminder K. Bhambra and Dalia Gebrial) of the volume Decolonising the University (Pluto Press, 2018).

Dr Lisa Tilley (2017-2021)

Birkbeck, University of London

Lisa Tilley is Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London and current Programme Director,  MSc in Global Environmental Politics & Policy, School of Social Sciences, History & Philosophy. Her research interests are largely anchored in critical approaches to political ecology and political economy but also cross over into critical geography and urban studies. She draws on various theoretical approaches to ‘the colonial question’ in material analyses of environmental harm and expropriation with a special focus on frontiers of capital in Indonesia. She has analysed key sites of colonial/capitalist expansion – the plantation, the mine, and the city – adding detail to our knowledge of social and ecological formations, technologies and logics produced through those locations. Lisa also co-founded the collaborative research project Raced Markets, which explores ‘race’ in relation to political economy, while her other positions include Associate Editor of the pedagogical resource Global Social Theory.