DISTINGUISHED CHAIR

Ranabir Samaddar belongs to the critical school of thinking and is considered as one of the foremost theorists in the field of forced migration studies. He has worked extensively on issues of forced migration, the theory and practices of dialogue, nationalism and post-colonial statehood in South Asia, and new regimes of technological restructuring and labour control. The much-acclaimed The Politics of Dialogue was a culmination of his long work on justice, rights, and peace. His recent political writings published in the form of a two-volume account, The Materiality of Politics (2007), and The Emergence of the Political Subject (2009) have challenged some of the prevailing accounts of the birth of nationalism and the nation-state, and have signaled a new turn in critical postcolonial thinking. His co-authored work on new town and new forms of accumulation Beyond Kolkata: Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination (Routledge, 2013) takes forward urban studies in the context of post-colonial capitalism. He is currently the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group.