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Sumi Madhok

@sumimadhok.bsky.social
4.7K followers 214 following 254 posts

Professor at LSE| Feminist Political Theorist|Own Views| She/her. Thinking and writing on human rights|Anti-imperial epistemic justice|Conceptual Diversity| Rights politics in most of the world| Recent book📕 bit.ly/3C3Tb7V

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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 4h
The Nobel Committee awards international Human Rights Lawyer, Navi Pillay, the Peace Prize saying what everyone knows: “the system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack”. The US moves swiftly to ensure there is empirical evidence to back this up.
bbc.co.uk
US impose sanctions on ICC with threat to 'end' international court
The US says the measures are aimed at restricting the tribunal's resources and ability to operate.
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Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Those of us who work on contemporary France have long predicted some kind of social protest in advance of the 2027 elections. It could have been a gilets jaunes mk 2 related to high petrol prices, but instead it was school students. Some thoughts... www.lemonde.fr/politique/ar...
lemonde.fr
Un gouvernement fébrile, à la merci d’un embrasement qu’il n’a pas vu venir
La journée de mobilisation de mardi inquiète au sommet de l’Etat, alors que la tension n’a cessé de croître en près de trois semaines d’actions et que l’exécutif semble avoir pour l’instant donné la p...
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The horrifying shame. Leader of opposition, Rahul Gandhi violently dragged on the road and away from the public protest by the Police. Photo credit: Rahul Gandhi’s Instagram.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Saturday afternoon.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Yes, quite, where are all the men in this talking to sons? “Where are all the men – the celebrity dads, the sports coaches and the role models, the male politicians who are usually only too keen to talk about sexual assault if the perpetrators are immigrants…” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
After rape allegations at Cornell University, why are women again being urged to talk to their sons? Why not men? | Gaby Hinsliff
Boys learn by watching how the men they respect treat their partners, female colleagues, women on the street. Now is the time for those men to step up, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The brilliant Rafeef Ziadah is giving the BRISMES annual lecture! Date: 12 Nov.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
No country for women.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cm70lpg5z45go?at_medium=RSS
bbc.co.uk
Women protest in the streets of Delhi after string of sexual assaults
BBC correspondent Azadeh Moshiri reports from Delhi, where hundreds of women are protesting.
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Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Thanks Lucy! I will never tire of the wonderfulness of my students, past and present. And it's not just in the classroom: many students of mine have appeared in book acknowledgements, too; they shape our research in myriad ways. A reminder that *we* are the university, not the bean-counters!
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Alan Lester @alanlester.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Excellent article on British awareness of the Nazi death camps and ambivalence over Jewish refugees. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Britain knew about the Holocaust as it happened. A new exhibition reckons with that truth
Research draws upon reporting and witness testimony, while a permanent memorial is planned for London
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The politics of gender is key to electoral outcomes around the globe. Hmmm…now, where have you ever heard that before? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Meloni accused of ‘running scared’ with cap on foreign children in classrooms
Critics say decree also banning burqa in schools shows Italian PM worried about losing far-right voters in next year’s elections
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
“The authoritarian turn, which can be understood as a process of fascisation, is enabled by crises internal to liberal democracies…” Everyday shows that a ‘fascist majority’ is a real possibility in the UK, too.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
‘We could be heroes…’ They are! Link: rnli.org/support-us/g...
rnli.org
Donate to the RNLI and help save lives at sea
Your donations really make a difference. We depend on your generosity to educate people to stay safe and prevent tragedies on and offshore. Donate here.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Yes. There’s a certain bizarre breathlessness and a palpable thrill even, in the media reportage on the far right. Frightening, really.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Everyday household names. “King James II… whose statue celebrating him as a “defender of the faith” stands in Trafalgar Square, London; the composer George Frideric Handel; and the philosopher John Locke, both shareholders in the Royal African Company (RAC).” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
Monarchs, MPs and merchants: the register laying bare Britain’s slave-trading past
Exclusive: New research identifies thousands who profited from trafficking enslaved Africans and traces some financial links to institutions still operating today
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
‘At a time when many policymakers are concerned about strengthening public control, humanities and social sciences research is central to ask questions about how and in whose interests technology is being developed, how it can be adopted, deployed and governed’ ukri.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...
ukri.substack.com
Why AI will fail without the humanities and social sciences
AI can transform society. But only if society has a say in shaping it, writes Hetan Shah, Chief Executive of The British Academy.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
We’re witnessing colonialism in action in real time. That’s all.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
A beautiful piece on knowledge, understanding and mathematical research as “ free creative art”—‘one of the rare remaining examples of unalienated labor’.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
“We saw our grandparents hold on to the keys of return…” “We need to prove we have the right to this land, because things could change drastically. There is fear of forced deportation, the expulsion of people from their homes and the permanent seizure of the eastern areas.”
ft.com
The battle to prove who owns Gaza’s ruins
Under the Palestinian enclave’s rubble are papers showing to whom the land belongs
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
“Reading is, for me, the most sacred relationship to a text. It is a sustained prayer to be *haunted* by a text: let it take me over, in an unanticipatable way.” Introduced movingly by Ranji Khanna, Gayatri Spivak on Jameson, the burden of reading, & “humanities as a weapon” 💙😭🙏
youtu.be
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Reading Jameson” | Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory
YouTube video by Holberg Prize
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Now on my ‘teaching/reading’ list. @lsegender.bsky.social
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Oh yes! In my case, it’s also a growing mountain of piled up LRBs. @lrb.co.uk
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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.
ft.com
Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says
LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I had the pleasure of reviewing Nadine Attwell's wonderful Archives of Intimacy: Racial Mixing and Chinese Lives in the Colonial Port City, 1905–1949 (www.sup.org/books/histor...) and also writing about women seafarers. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Laleh Khalili · Canton Kitty: Seafaring
Seafaring is a bundle of contradictions. It is highly skilled labour, yet mostly invisible. Lower ratings of seafarers...
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Charlotte Weatherill @ckweatherill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The point isn't to produce essays, it's to teach students how to think for fuck's sake. The minute you automate that, it's over. You might as well close the course. Which they're also doing. This is an attack on learning, and everyone is just shrugging.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Arundhati Roy: “Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.” m.thewire.in/article/righ...
m.thewire.in
Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous - The Wire
Can all the people be fooled all the time? Can a country with a population of a billion-and-a-half be dragged around like a corpse forever? It cannot. The Cockroaches are out and about.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Louis Althusser murdered his wife and “it took over 40 years for this murder to be recognised as a femicide, and only thanks to the work of feminists, researchers and activists who kept the story alive”.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Arundhati Roy: “Just when hope seemed lost, they came. Young roaches riding in on the rain. The progeny of the unholy union between a judge and a joke.” m.thewire.in/article/righ...
m.thewire.in
Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous - The Wire
Can all the people be fooled all the time? Can a country with a population of a billion-and-a-half be dragged around like a corpse forever? It cannot. The Cockroaches are out and about.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
It’s taken a quarter of a century to arrive here and will probably take a few more years for criminal charges, warrants…justice.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
H/t @carriem.co.uk
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Theory 101: “gender is a framework that’s been developed through the social sciences. A framework is not subjective. A framework is a way of framing knowledge and a mode of inquiry”. www.currentaffairs.org/news/judith-butler-explains-the-gender-panic
currentaffairs.org
Judith Butler Explains the Gender Panic
The leading scholar and philosopher responds to critics of “gender ideology,” both from the right and left.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Frantz Fanon born 20 July 1925. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
newyorker.com
Frantz Fanon’s Enduring Legacy
The post-colonial thinker’s seminal book, “The Wretched of the Earth,” described political oppression in psychological terms. What are its lessons for our current moment?
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Adil Haque @adhaque.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Artists in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City paint a mural of Lamine Yamal (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP via Getty Images)
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Zohran Mamdani is beauteous on solidarity as a ‘strategy’ for universal justice without exceptions. “But justice is not measured by where we stand after history has issued its verdict. It is measured by where we stand when the verdict is still being rendered”. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Nelson Mandela held a mirror to humanity – and showed us what solidarity means | Zohran Mamdani
In a speech given on Wednesday in honor of Nelson Mandela Day, New York’s mayor reflects on what Madiba can teach us in a fractured era
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Congratulations to the government on saving 2700 jobs by nationalising British Steel. Now, about the 18,000 university jobs lost in the last 18 months, with more coming…
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Of course, I like to be cited but for the things I’ve actually written! In the last few months I’m noting hallucinatory citations attributed to me, which I’ve no memory of ever having written. Can I say, the article titles are pretty unimaginative and quite rubbish, too. Oh well…
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Environmental nightmare for real. electricity, land and water. “By 2030, AI data centres could be using enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3bn sub-Saharan Africans”. Transparency and ethics…anyone?
giftarticle.ft.com
The great AI data centre cover-up
Tech companies need to come clean about the mounting environmental fallout of their race to build more hubs
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Professa Murray @kalimurray.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
The greatest singer of Cabo Verde was Cesoria Evora, and it is because she mixed with melancholy with joy. Sodade: youtu.be/ERYY8GJ-i0I?....
youtu.be
CESARIA EVORA Sodade .wmv
YouTube video by SuperXavier30
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
I say this because, and even after all these years, I’m always somewhat struck by scholarly investments that insist on keeping apart theory or the theoretical from the empirical.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
OK I’ll say this: Theorists of all stripes from ‘most of the world’— political, feminist, social and cultural—have always theorised from the empirical realities of not only their own but also of ‘other’ worlds. They do because Eurocentred theories and concepts don’t ‘theorise’ ‘other’ worlds.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
First they came for the languages. In the hope that no one would have the words to say what was happening. 1/9🧵
bbc.co.uk
University of Aberdeen's plans to cut modern language degrees were 'rushed' - review
The University of Aberdeen says it accepts there were "missteps" in its process in 2023.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
These are the numbers being cut from Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter:
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
This looks terrific. It’s now on my ‘to read and teach’ list. Congratulations, @galarexer.bsky.social
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Not so much surprised, I have to say.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Yes. “We must stand firmly by our commitments under the 1951 refugee convention and the ECHR…”. No “performative cruelty”. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Remove home secretary Mahmood and rip up her asylum plans, says Alf Dubs
Exclusive: Labour peer who fled Nazis as a child says Andy Burnham has chance to ‘correct mistakes’ on refugees
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Thank you!
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
On my teaching and reading list. doi.org/10.1093/9780... Congratulations!
doi.org
Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China
Abstract. This book intervenes in two interrelated conversations. First, it is concerned with the construction of ‘the West’ as a global discursive space a
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Friends of Exeter, former students and alumni, can you please sign the petition below: www.change.org/p/stop-redun...
change.org
Sign the Petition
Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter
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Alan Lester @alanlester.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
With hardly any media coverage one of Britain’s few world-leading sectors is, right now, being decimated. The university funding model does not work and anti-immigrant hysteria has deprived the country of the means by which we met the shortfall: international students.
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Sumi Madhok @sumimadhok.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
World Refugee Day. The sublime Mahmoud Darwish ‘Think of Others’.
As you prepare your breaktast, think of others (do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself (say: "If only / were a candle in the dark").
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