Decolonisation in the 21st Century

Amid rising global inequality, intensifying geopolitical frictions, and the renewed force of colonial logics, this volume offers a critical interrogation of coloniality, decolonial practices, global capitalism, and the technologies of governance that entrench social and environmental injustice.

Bringing together leading scholars from across disciplines and regions, the book traverses a wide range of contemporary terrains—from digital governance and platform capitalism to gig economies, migrant labor, and the racialized violence of displacement. Contributors unpack the historical roots and systemic architectures of domination while foregrounding situated efforts of resistance and decolonial praxis.

Through incisive analysis and engaged scholarship, the volume challenges the institutional and ideological exclusions that continue to shape our world, offering compelling insights into how decolonisation might be reimagined as both critique and struggle in the twenty-first century.

Author Biography

Joyce C.H. Liu is a professor of cultural studies, critical theory, and political philosophy and the director of the International Center for Cultural Studies at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Her research spans comparative literature, psychoanalysis, visual culture, and Chinese political thought, with recent work on geopolitics, biopolitics, border politics, internal colonialism, unequal citizenship, decolonization of knowledge, and art activism. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1984, she taught in Taiwan for over four decades, founding key institutes in comparative literature and cultural studies. Author of seven books and over 100 articles, Liu’s landmark works trace the topology of mentalities across the Taiwan–China complex. She also leads major transnational projects on migration, justice, and decolonial knowledge.

Brett Neilson is Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. He is the author (with Sandro Mezzadra) of The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World (2024), The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (2019) and Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labour (2013). Together with Ned Rossiter, Manuela Bojadžijev and others, he is currently working on an Australian Research Council research project on transborder electricity infrastructures.