Dr Ahmed Raza Memon

About

I am a Post-Doctoral academic with interests in sociology of international legal knowledge production, critical approaches to international legal history and histories of global governance from decolonial perspectives.

I have been involved with the Decolonise UoK project at Kent Law School under the Centre for Sexuality, Race and Gender Justice where I have been part of arranging workshops, two major conference and reading groups as well as lead research in the project itself.

I am co-editor of ‘Decolonial Dialogue’, an ECR led cross disciplinary project on decolonial action, theory and practise. I am currently running a series on Decoloniality in the Sub-continent with specific focus on Pakistan on the site. See my blog contributions as author on the site.

I am a student group leader and coordinator for the decolonising the curriculum (2018-present) project led by Dr Suhraiya Jivraj at the Kent Law School. As part of the project, I also facilitate the Postgraduate research students decolonising research collective. As a founding member of the collective, I organise and coordinate workshops on anti-racist, anti-sexist classroom practices and restructuring Post-graduate research training to include global, de-colonial knowledge and sources.

Along with my co-host and CECIL fellow Eric Leofladd, I produce and host CECIL’s critical international law podcast ‘Fool’s utopia’ where Eric and I interview leading experts and early career scholars on the power and politics of knowledge production in the international legal order.

Research interests

My research interest include sociology of international law and global governance, international legal imaginations beyond euro-centric conceptions, resistance in international law, decolonial theory and teaching in practise.

PhD research project

Project title: Networks, international law violence: A history of a dialogical interplay

Project description: My project conceptualizes international law through the modality of network of social actors producing authority as part of the process of norm production in the application and deployment of international legal norms. Through this conceptualization, I frame my work within decolonial theories on colonial governance, specifically Achille Mbembe and Anibal Quijano, to show that the violence of networks as a modality of international law is characterized along race, caste, gender and religion. My project adds on to contemporary conversations on critical histories of global governance, international legal norm production and sociology of international law through the centring of colonial histories as a move towards a ‘decolonial perspective on sociology of international law’.

Publications

Articles

Ahmed Raza Memon & Suhraiya Jivraj (2020) Trust, courage and silence: carving out decolonial spaces in higher education through student–staff partnerships, The Law Teacher, 54:4, 475-488, DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2020.1827777

Book Chapters

Race, religion and the male experience: Intersectional conversations with Muslim men, in Jivraj, S & Thomas, D, Towards Decolonising the University, A Kaleidoscope for empowered action, Counter Press, pg.116-119

Decolonising research: journey to the research ethics forum, in Jivraj, S & Thomas, D Towards Decolonising the University, A Kaleidoscope for empowered action, Counter Press, pg.150-164

Stripping the White Walls: The Podcast series, in Jivraj,S & Thomas, D Towards Decolonising the University, A Kaleidoscope for Empowered Action, Counter Press, pg. 94-100