4 Decolonizing Sociology: In Pursuit of Truth, Healing, Reparations, and Restructuring

Rodney D. Coates is a Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Miami University of Ohio. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago and has published extensively. His coauthored book The Matrix of Race (2021) is receiving acclaim across the academy. The Association of Black Sociologists, the American Sociological Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems have all recognized his scholarship, mentoring, and service to the discipline and the nation.

Anwubiko Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech. He is ranked as one of the top criminologists in the world today by www.academicinfluence.com, and he is the author of the following books: Community Policing in Nigeria (coauthored, 2021); Routledge Handbook on Africana Criminologies (coedited, 2020); Critical, Creative and Centered Scholar-Activism (2016); Counter-Colonial Criminology (2003); Pan African Issues in Crime and Justice (coedited, 2004; republished 2017); and Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997; republished 2018). He won the 2020 Amistad Award from Central Connecticut State University; he was appointed Professor Extraordinarius by the University of South Africa, 2021–2024; and he won the Excellence in Outreach and International Initiatives from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, 2021. He was the founding editor-in-chief of African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies. He was the founding series editor of the Ashgate Publishers Interdisciplinary Research Series in Ethnic, Gender, and Class Relations. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Flinders University, Australia. He is the secretary of the Association of Black Sociologists, USA.

Gurminder K. Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex. She is author of Colonialism and Modern Social Theory (2021, with John Holmwood), Connected Sociologies (2014), and the award-winning Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007).

Ali Meghji is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. His work bridges critical race theory and decolonial studies, as documented in his latest book, A Critical Synergy: Race, Decoloniality, World Crises.

Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture and a fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory.

José Itzigsohn is Professor of Sociology at Brown University. He is a Du Boisian sociologist, that is, a sociologist that aims to rethink the discipline along the lines proposed by W. E. B. Du Bois. He understands sociology as a discipline that is rooted in a historical understanding of the present, that is, global and relational, and takes racialized modernity as the object of its work. Within this broad approach to the discipline, his specific interests are twofold. First, social theory. In this field, he is working to develop a decolonial Du Boisian sociology. Second, he works on alternative forms of economic organization, specifically how the marginalized of racial and colonial capitalism build informal and solidarity economies.

Raewyn Connell’s long and distinguished career has produced tremendously important work traversing numerous areas of sociology including books on theories of gender and class (Gender and Power, 1987; Masculinities, 1995, 2005; and Gender: In World Perspective, 2002, 2015). Raewyn has also been on the forefront of examining the colonial and corporate impact on sociological knowledge production in books such as Southern Theory (2007) and The Good University (2019). Raewyn has a long involvement in the labor movement, the peace movement, feminist groups such as Sydney Action for Juárez, and support of public education. More formally, Raewyn has been an advisor to United Nations initiatives on gender equality and peacemaking.

Sari Hanafi is Professor of Sociology, Director of Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, and Chair of the Islamic Studies program at the American University of Beirut. He was the president of the International Sociological Association (2018–2023). Among his recent books: coauthored Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise.