Dr Ali Meghji is a Lecturer in Social Inequalities, having completed a research fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, a visiting fellowship at Harvard’s Weatherhead Centre, and a PhD, MPhil, and BA in sociology at Cambridge. He is the director for the MPhil in marginality and exclusion for the 2019-20 academic year, and is the course organiser for Global Capitalism in Lent and Easter terms, 2020.
Ali’s predominant research interests lie in critical race theory and decolonial thought.
In terms of critical race theory, he is interested in the study of contemporary racism through the racialised social systems approach. In particular, Ali’s prior work on Black middle class Brits brought together insights from cultural sociology with critical race theory in order to investigate British racism and anti-racism. Staying in this line of research, Ali has recently received a grant to study Black elite anti-racism in the US and South Africa, while he also has a forthcoming book on critical race theory answering the question ‘What is theoretical about critical race theory?’
In terms of decolonial thought, Ali is interested in the ongoing presence of coloniality in the world system. Ali has a signifiant interest in the differences that underlie the sociology of race (which centres racialisation as a foundational principle), and decolonial thought (which centres imperialism, Empire, and colonialism), leading him to take a significant interest in the ’synergy’ between the two approaches. In this regard, Ali is interested in how contemporary phenomena - from Trump, through to Bolsanaro, Brexit, and right-wing European populism - cannot be understood solely through the sociology of race or decolonial thought, but rather through a synergy (rather than amalgamation or synthesis) between the two approaches which silmultaneously acknowledge national radicalised social systems and the coloniality of the world system. In terms of decolonial thought, Ali is also interested in how the production and valuation of sociological knowledge is skewed along radicalised and imperial lines. How come so much ‘data’ comes from the South, and yet all the seminal theories we are taught come from the North? How come all the ’top ranked’ sociology journals, manuscript presses, and research centres are based in the North? How does this globalised political economy of knowledge reproduce neo-colonialism, academic dependency, and extraversion at an everyday level for Southern intellectuals?
Given his research interests, Ali also has a keen interest in cultural sociology and social theory. He is available to supervise graduate students in critical race theory; Empire and imperialism; cultural sociology; race and class; and decolonial approaches in social theory and the sociology of knowledge.
