Sheharyar Imran

2023-24 Graduate Fellow

shimran@jhu.edu

Sheharyar Imran is a PhD candidate in Political Science specializing in International Relations and Political Theory. Broadly, his research examines the role of colonialism in shaping the capitalist global order.

Sheharyar’s dissertation, “Colonial Worldmaking: Race, Capital, and Abolition in the Indo-Atlantic World” analyzes how empire—as a political-economic formation that co-articulates the logics of race, capital, and ecology through relations of coercion, discipline, and violence—has shaped capitalist globalization. Focusing on the entanglement of ideas and practices across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds under British colonialism, Sheharyar examines the racial-capitalist dimensions of key pillars upholding global order, including the spread of private property regimes and land grabbing; liberal constructions of subjectivity and humanism; and economic development and the circulation of “free labor”. Sheharyar is also interested in the politics of abolition, cross-racial solidarity, and anti-colonial worldmaking. 

Sheharyar is a recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship awarded by the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Previously, Sheharyar earned his B.A. in International Studies from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.