Anti-Imperial Epistemic Justice and Rights Politics in Most of the World

Delivered by the most outstanding academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s flagship Lecture Programme showcases the very best scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

This lecture will introduce the concept of “anti-imperial epistemic justice”, an essential framework for understanding the politics of rights and human rights in the majority of societies worldwide. This framework is not only crucial for understanding rights politics, but also for promoting ethical and democratic approaches to knowledge production more broadly. Drawing on ethnographically informed theoretical research on rights politics, this lecture will highlight key intellectual tools for considering anti-imperial epistemic justice. These include critical interventions, shaped by non-idealist and pluralistic approaches to thinking.

Speaker: Professor Sumi Madhok

Sumi Madhok is Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies and Head of Department of Gender Studies at the LSE. She is also Faculty Associate at the LSE International Inequalities Institute. Her most recent book Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights and Gendered Struggles for Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2021) received ‘The Susan Strange Best Book Prize’ and ‘The Sussex International Theory Prize, 2022’. It also received The International Studies Association’s Lee Ann Fujii Book Prize ‘Honorable Mention’. She is also the author of Rethinking Agency: Developmentalism, Gender and Rights (2013); and the co-editor of Gender, Agency and Coercion (2013); and of the Sage Handbook of Feminist Theory (2014).

Chair: Professor Kieran McEvoy

Kieran McEvoy is the Senator George J. Mitchell Chair in Peace, Security and Justice at the Mitchell Institute and a Professor of Law and Transitional Justice at Queens University Belfast.

Free, booking required

This event includes a reception for all attendees after the lecture.

This event will take place in person in partnership with Queen's University Belfast. If you have any questions about this event please email [email protected].

Image credits: Protesters holding signs during a demonstration in the street, Getty Images.