Shaira Vadasaria

Dr. Shaira Vadasaria is a Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies in the Sociology Department within the School of Social and Political Science

Research Interests

Race and Colonialism; Law, Criminalization and Social Regulation; Forced Displacement, Critical Refugee Studies; Decoloniality; Intersectional Feminist Theory; Cultural Studies; Critical Methodology; and Palestine Studies

My research and teaching examines formations of race and racialization across law, social regulation, and settler colonial nation building. I enter these fields of inquiry through epistemological and methodological considerations, two of which have been central in my research and scholarship: First, how do we account for the continuity of race as it changes in grammar and political form? Second, how do racialized communities make claims to decoloniality and/or freedom amidst on-going processes of social death and exclusion?

These two questions have given shape and content to my research program which engages race and decolonial thought across multiple field sites and scholarly field debates including (but not limited to): The building of the ‘Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem’ on top of Mamilla Cemetery, a Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem (see ‘Necronationalism: managing race, death and the nation’s skeletons’ (Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 2015); The epistemic tensions within securitization studies in addressing anti-immigrant liberal racism and the securitization of immigration (see ‘Uninhibited Violence: race and the securitization of immigration’ (Critical Studies on Security, 2016); The state of the field of socio-legal studies in Canada and its engagement with race and colonialism (see ‘Race and Colonialism in Socio-Legal Studies in Canada, forthcoming), and the racial politics humanitarianism and return in the early years of Palestinian expulsion (see ‘1948 to 1951: The racial politics of humanitarianism and return in Palestine (Oñati Socio-Legal Studies, 2020).

My SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) funded doctoral research received the ‘Sociology Distinguished Dissertation Award’ issued by the Department of Sociology at York University and subsequently, I became the 2019 recipient of the ‘Outstanding Graduating Sociology Student Award’ issued by the Canadian Sociological Association.

Currently, I am working on my book manuscript “Temporalities of Return: Race, Refusal and Claims to Otherwise in Palestine” (solicited by Duke University Press) which tends to the representational lives of return for displaced Palestinians from the Galilee to Gaza. I read these lived claims to return across law, aesthetics, sensory politics and land-based sovereignty movements.

Before joining SSPS, I held a Visiting Assistant Professor appointment in Palestine (Jerusalem, Al-Quds University) and Canada (Ottawa, Carleton University).