naren.kum@uwaterloo.ca
Education:
BA, University of Texas, 1997
PhD, American University, 2010
Scholarly and Professional Activities:
Associate Editor, Journal of Narrative Politics (2015-present)
Member, Best Graduate Student Paper Award Committee, Global Development Section, International Studies Association (2015-2017)
Executive Committee Member, Global South Caucus, International Studies Association (2011-2012)
Research Areas:
Global politics of mass atrocity and social repair; Decolonial and post-colonial international relations; South Asian politics; Social histories of indigenous plants; Narrative writing, auto-ethnography
Courses Taught:
- PACS 611 - Reconciliation
- PACS 620 - Special Topics: Encountering Durable Violations
About:
Dr. Kumarakulasingam’s work explores the world-making capacities of marginalized actors in contexts of massive violence. One line of scholarship examines the lived experience of atrocity in postcolonial societies as a site for rethinking globalized notions of redress, repair, and transgression. A second, undertaken in collaboration with Mvuselelo Ngcoya (University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban), engages with the life-worlds that sustain the cultivation of indigenous plants in South Africa. His research interests include political violence, global justice, colonialism and decolonization, postcolonial nationalism, food sovereignty and narrative writing.
Select Publications
- Co-Editor, Violence, the Third World, and International Relations (Routledge, 2019).
- “The Horror of ‘Horrorism’: Laundering Metropolitan Killings,” Third World Quarterly 40 (2) 2019: 250-265. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1551057
- “Documenting the ‘Killing Fields’ of Sri Lanka: Atrocity Images and the Politics of Habeas Corpus Extremis,” Social Identities 25(4) 2019: 496-511. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2018.1514154
- “The Lived Experience of Food Sovereignty: Gender, Indigenous Crops and Small-scale Farming in Mutubatuba, South Africa,” (co-authored with Mvuselelo Ngcoya) Journal of Agrarian Change 17 (3) 2016: 480-496. DOI: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joac.12170/full
- Guest Editor of Special Issue, “Decolonial Temporalities: Plural Pasts, Irreducible Presents, and Open Futures,” Contexto Internacional 38 (3): 2016. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_issuetoc&pid=0102-852920160003&lng=en&nrm=iso
- “De-islanding” in Quýnh N. Phạm and Robbie Shilliam (eds). Meanings of Bandung: Decolonization and International Relations: Postcolonial Orders and Decolonial Visions (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), pp. 51-60.
- “Plant Provocations: Botanical Indigeneity and De(colonial) Imaginations,” (co-authored with Mvuselelo Ngcoya) Contexto Internacional 38 (3) 2016: 843-864. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0102-8529.2016380300006
- “Bloody Translations: The Politics of International Compassion and Horror,” Journal of Narrative Politics Vol 1 (1) 2014: 61-75. http://jnp.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/default/issue/view/1