Uma Kothari (University of Manchester)

I am professor of Postcolonial Studies in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester. Although my academic background is in Geography, for the last 20 years I have been based in a multi-disciplinary institute teaching and researching international development theory and practice. My research has focused on colonial and postcolonial analyses of international development and on diasporas and migration. On these issues I have edited a number of books including Participation: the new tyranny? (2001), Development Theory and Practice: critical perspectives (2002) and A Radical History of Development Studies (2005). Much of this research has explored how eurocentric, particularly colonialist, ideologies and practices continue to pervade the workings of the international development industry. What has emerged from this work has been a growing awareness about the centrality of time to explanations of difference and inequality. More recently, therefore, I have been carrying out historically informed research on how different conceptualisations, imaginings and uses of time shape global inequalities by examining the spatial mapping of different temporalities. More specifically, I examine  how temporalities, of ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’, are associated not solely with different historical moments but with particular people and places. I am also interested in identifying the variety of ways in which these hegemonic temporalities are being resisted.