Shaira Vadasaria is a Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies in the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh and a Senior Associate Fellow of the Alwaleed Centre. Before joining UoE, she held an assistant professorship appointment at Al-Quds University, Bard College (Palestine, 2016-2019) and Visiting Professorship in the Global and International Studies program at Carleton University, Canada (2020). In 2020, she co-founded RACE.ED, a university-wide multidisciplinary teaching and research hub on the study of race and decolonial studies, from which she helped to establish a pre-honours curriculum on the subject, which is open to all students across the University. Dr Vadasaria’s research advances interdisciplinary social inquiry on genealogies of race & racial violence constitutive of settler colonialism, imperialism and empire, with an interest in ethics and methodology. Her research contributes towards social, anthropological and socio-legal studies inquiry on Palestine, with a focus on Palestinian displacement, resistance and return, as navigated under and against the racial politics of humanitarianism, recognition and redress. Some of her recent publications include “Sensory Politics of Return: Hearing Gaza under Siege,” in Gaza on Screen, Duke University Press 2023 (ed. Nadia Yaqub); “1948-1951: the racial politics of humanitarianism and return in Palestine,” Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 2020; and “Race and Colonialism in Socio-Legal Studies in Canada” (co-authored with Carmela Murdocca and Tim Bryan) in Violence, Imagination, and Resistance: Socio-legal Interrogations of Power, Athabasca University Press, 2023 (eds., Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer and Katrin Roots).View Dr Vadasaria’s profile. Contact Dr Vadasaria:shaira.vadasaria@ed.ac.uk This article was published on 2025-02-20
