Anshuman Mondal

Colonialism, postcolonial studies culture, identity, politics, religion, Islam, Muslims, South Asia, Middle East, modern literature, racism, anti-racism, free speech

Anshuman Mondal is Professor of Modern Literature, specialising in post-colonial studies. He joined the School in September 2016, having previously held academic posts at the University of Leicester and Brunel University London, where he was Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies.

He is the author of Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity: Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Amitav Ghosh (Manchester University Press, 2007), and Young British Muslim Voices, an account of his journey across the UK talking to young Muslims.

In 2012-13 Anshuman was awarded an AHRC Research Fellowship (£94, 688 FEC) to undertake a research project on Muslim-related freedom of speech controversies, and the ethics of reading and writing in a multicultural context. In 2014 he published Islam and Controversy: The Politics of Free Speech after Rushdie (Palgrave). He has continued to write and research on 'free speech', and is currently completing a new book provisionally entitled Racism and 'Free Speech': What Anti-racists Need to Know.

Throughout his career, he has published essays on Indian literature in English, Gandhi, gender politics in Indian nationalism, modern Arabic narrative genres, modern Islam and fundamentalism, and the politics of the Middle East, contemporary representations of Muslims, and on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In 2004, Anshuman led an international project on 'Faith and Secularism' sponsored by Counterpoint, the cultural relations think-tank of the British Council, and wrote the Introduction to the pamphlet Faith and Secularism, part of the Birthday Counterpoint series, which was published by the British Council to mark its 70th anniversary. He has also published journalism in the leading current affairs magazine Prospect, and also The Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’. He also writes a current affairs blog called Human Zoo: http://anshumanmondal.wordpress.com/

In 2014, Anshuman was appointed Chair of the Postcolonial Studies Association. He also served on the QAA English Subject Benchmark Review Panel and has held an AHRC Fellowship in 2012-13, as well as a Visiting Fellowship at the Universities of Melbourne in that same year. In 2016, Anshuman was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s International Scholar Award (VISA) at the University of Wollongong.

Anshuman has appeared on several TV and radio shows, including Newsnight, Al-Jazeera's 'The Listening Post', British Satellite Television News, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze and Thinking Allowed and the BBC World Service. He has also spoken at numerous public debates including at the Wilderness Festival and the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

Anshuman has research interests in postcolonial literature and theory, nationalism, multiculturalism and the literature of diaspora. His main areas of research interest are in:

• Postcolonial studies: colonial and post-colonial literature, culture and history

• Literatures of South Asia, South Asian diaspora, Black and Asian British writing; modern Arabic fiction (in translation)
• Culture and Identity: race, ethnicity, nationalism, multiculturalism
• Religion, modernity and secularism, especially modern Islam, fundamentalism, and the politics of the Middle East
• Theory: Marxism, postcolonialism, cultural studies
• Free speech, freedom of religion, and liberalism

Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Arts and Humanities