Anaheed Al-Hardan and Julian Go | Anticolonialism and Social Thought

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Anticolonialism and Social Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2026). The volume’s editors, Anaheed Al-Hardan and Julian Go, will be joined in conversation by contributors Arwa Awan and Ibrahim Khan, and Jennifer Pitts will moderate. 

Not only did the anticolonial movements of the past two centuries help bring down the global order of colonial empires, they also produced novel, innovative and vital social thought. Anticolonialism has been largely ignored in conventional Europe-centered social thought and theory, but this book shows how our sociological imagination can be expanded by taking challenges to colonialism and imperialism seriously. Amidst their struggles to change the world, anticolonial actors offer devastating critiques of it, challenging the racism, economic exploitation, political exclusions and social inequalities central to imperialism and colonialism. Anticolonial thinkers and activists thereby seek to understand the world they are struggling against and, in the process, develop new concepts and theorize the world in new ways. Edited by Anaheed Al-Hardan and Julian Go, Anticolonialism and Social Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2025) includes chapters by leading scholars that help uncover this dissident tradition of social thought, as the authors discuss an array of anticolonial thinkers, activists and movements from Palestine, India, South Africa, Brazil, Algeria and beyond.