Dr. Meera Sabaratnam

Meera Sabaratnam is a Reader in International Relations. Her research interests are in the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of world politics, in both theory and practice. She has worked on questions of decolonisation, Eurocentrism, race and methodology in IR. She has applied these concepts to the analysis of international development aid, peacebuilding and statebuilding, most recently in her book Decolonising Intervention (2017). Her regional interests are in Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean region. Currently she is working on questions of race in IR theory and a postcolonial historiography of the First World War.

She is a member of the International Studies Association and has chaired its Global Development Section. From 2013-17 she was a founding co-convener of the Colonial / Postcolonial / De-colonial Working Group of the British International Studies Association. She has served as Online Editor for International Studies Quarterly and as a Trustee and former Editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals International Studies Quarterly and Security Dialogue.

Meera is also interested in questions of higher education policy and practice, particularly in terms of racialised inequalities, access to research and academic governance. At SOAS she has chaired the Academic Senate and the Decolonising SOAS Working Group. In the latter role she lead-authored the Decolonising SOAS Learning and Teaching Toolkit and has delivered many talks internationally about this project. Prior to joining SOAS she was Temporary Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Cambridge. She received her first degree from the University of Oxford, her MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.