Research
I study structural forms of violence (e.g. race, caste, class, patriarchy) rooted or exacerbated through imperial encounters that have been sanitized of their colonial histories and normalized in the present day. At the moment, I have four primary areas of research:
- The first is a book on the subject pluriversal sovereignty, focusing on 19th century Sri Lanka and its entanglements as part of the British empire
- The second concerns settler-colonial studies and decolonial options grounded in life as an immigrant to Mi’kma’ki .This work involves recent and in-progress writing analyzing citizenship as a mode of colonization, as well as pluriversal ethics and values associated with taking Indigenous sovereignty seriously.
- The third is a four-year SSHRC Insight Grant funded project studying experiences of racialization of Asian international students to Canadian universities, where I work as the Co-Investigator and project lead for the Halifax case study.
- The fourth concerns methods and strategies for building “racial resilience” and involves a both formal research and good deal of public education projects, including a White Fragility Clinic I developed alongside Dr. Gaynor Watson Creed in the Faculty of Medicine, and Safe Space For White Questions, developed alongside Dr. Alex Khasnabish and Fernwood Publishing. I am currently writing two books on this subject, both contracted to Fernwood Publishing, entitled Frequently Asked White Questions (with Alex Khasnabish) and How To Talk to Your Racist Uncle: A Manual For Racial Resilience.
I am cross-appointed to the Departments of International Development Studies, History, and Political Science and am interested in working with graduate students interested in similar and related themes. I am also a Founding Fellow at the MacEachen Institute of Public Policy and Governance (2019 – 2022) and served as the Chair and Program Chair of the Global Development Section of the International Studies Association (2019 – 2020). I teach courses on the colonial foundations of development studies and the state, M.K. Gandhi, postcolonial politics, and activism. This academic year I am teaching a blended community/student reading course entitled “Becoming The State,” a reading seminar on postcolonial nationalisms, and the International Development Studies Honours Workshop.
Teaching & Supervision
I have a partial teaching release for the Burgess Research Award this semester, and currently teaching INTD 4401/4402, the Honours Seminar in International Development Studies as well as a directed reading class in South Asian nationalism.
I work with students studying a wide range of topics connected to colonial entanglements, including refugee resettlement narratives in Canada, COVID conspiracy theories, equity and tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean, South Asian nationalisms, media representation of white male murderers of Indigenous girls, and colonial/decolonial studies more generally.
I will be on sabbatical July 1 2022 – June 30 2023 so I am not actively seeking graduate students at the moment. Funding is a challenge in the East Coast, and I encourage interested students to visit the Faculty of Graduate Studies page at Dalhousie University and ensure they are applying for the Harmonized scholarship program that will consider eligible students for the NS Government Scholarship and SSHRC MA and PhD scholarships.
Service
I am a founding co-chair of two Faculty level committees, the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Accessibility Committee, and the Chair/Coordinator Search Committee. I also developed and implemented (with Dr. Gaynor Watson Creed) a White Fragility Clinic housed in the Faculty of Medicine, now in it’s second year. I have been a long-time contributor to the International Studies Association’s Global Development Section, where I served as Chair and Program Chair and sat on juries for book and essay prizes over the years. For service details, please see CV.
Recent Publications
Ajay Parasram, 2021. “Seeing Whiteness In The Margins.” Journal of Narrative Politics 8/1: 7 – 9.
Ajay Parasram, 2021. “Solidarity is a Verb: Teaching Development Activism on Stolen Land” in Subversive Pedagogies: Radical Possibilities in the Academy edited by Kate Schick and Claire Timperley. New York: Routledge. pp 149 – 166
Ajay Parasram, 2021. “The Anti Colonial Revolution of the 2020s” in Letters From New Brunswick’s Future edited by Daniel Tubb, Abram Lutes, and Susan O’Donnell. Woodstock: Chapel Street Editions.
Ajay Parasram and Nissim Mannathukkaren, 2021. “Imperial Afterlives: Citizenship and Racial/Caste Fragility in Canada and India” Citizenship Studies online in advance, Oct. 8.
Ajay Parasram, 2020. “Engaging Capitalism and Slavery as Decolonial Text” in Reading the Post War Future: Textual Turning Points from 1944 edited by John Munro and Kirrily Freeman. London: Blomsbury, 113 – 128.
Ajay Parasram, “Pathological White Fragility and the Canadian Nation” Studies in Political Economy 100/2: 194 – 207.
CV
Click here to download my current academic CV
Ajay Parasram 