Hafsa Syed is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Lancaster University. Her research interrogates the enduring influence of the empire on contemporary state formations and institutions. Focusing on statelessness, she examines how colonial encounters shaped the making of nations, borders, and the very frameworks of liberal jurisprudence and democracy. Her work explores the profound psycho-sociological impact on how both colonisers and the colonised have perceived and represented themselves and one another, within shifting socio-political contexts. Her work further investigates how these inherited modes of operation give rise to paradoxes that lie at the heart of modern socio-political orders namely, exclusions in the form of statelessness, violence inflicted via extra-legality, and the continuity and simultaneity of racialized ‘Othering’ and democracy.  

 

Grounded in decolonial and postcolonial theory, Hafsa’s research is also methodological in its challenge to dominant ways of knowing. She draws on ethnographic, archival, and narrative-based approaches to foreground voices and experiences that are often marginalized or erased within state and academic discourses. Hafsa has conducted fieldwork with stateless and displaced populations, particularly among the Rohingya community, and has worked on the ground teaching at a school for refugee children in India.  

 

Her broader interests include the histories of international migration, race and racism, slavery, and the enduring entanglements of colonialism, imperialism, and neo-imperialism.