Fung Global Fellows to focus on ‘Colonial Residues’

Six exceptional scholars from around the world will come to Princeton University this fall to begin a year of research, writing and collaboration as the 12th cohort of Fung Global Fellows.

For the 2024-25 academic year, the scholars will expand understandings of “colonial residues.” Colonialism is frequently evoked today as a root cause of global inequity or, in some jarring instances, nostalgic celebration. In both the “new” states and the “old” ones that reluctantly let them go, colonialism’s many impacts are ubiquitous — its traces often tangible and measurable, shaping political regimes and socioeconomic wellbeing while also determining whose stories are told and by whom; whose achievements are celebrated and how; and whose resources are used, removed or polluted. 

Michael Laffan, the Paula Chow Professor of International and Regional Studies, professor of history, and director of the Center for Collaborative History has been appointed director of the program. “I am extremely happy to welcome our six new fellows to PIIRS whose scholarship bridges so much of the world, and even with a slight edge towards Southeast Asia,” he said. “We are looking forward to fascinating discussions on topics ranging from social resistance in Brazil and Ottoman imaginings of the British Empire to running amok in Malaya and the shaping of modern monarchies, not to mention peasant-theorizing in Pakistan and responses to economic precarity in Africa. All our scholars bring a wonderful mix of deep knowledge and energy and I very much look forward to seeing them integrate within the Princeton scholarly community, creating yet more connections in keeping with William Fung’s vision.”

The program is funded by a portion of a $10 million gift from Princeton 1970 alumnus William Fung of Hong Kong that is designed to substantially increase the University’s engagement with scholars around the world and inspire ideas that transcend borders. The program is administered by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). 

The Fung Global Fellows for the 2024-2025 academic year are:

• Kleoniki Alexopoulou, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture, Panteion University; 
• Juliana Streva, researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Latin American Studies and Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin; 
• Mu’izz Abdul Khalid, research associate at Global Awareness and Impact Alliance and adjunct lecturer at the Department of History and International Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam;
• Shozab Raza, assistant professor at the Social Justice Education and Anthropology Affiliated Faculty, Asian Institute, University of Toronto;
• Sezen Ünlüönen, assistant professor at the Department of English Literature and American Studies, Tel Aviv University;
• Christina Jialin Wu, lecturer in contemporary Asian history, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

More about the newly appointed Fung Global Fellows:

Kleoniki Alexopoulou is an economic and social historian specializing in the history of the Global South. She taught modern European history and revolutions as well as history of colonialism at Panteion University, while completing a postdoctoral study on welfare state development in Portugal and Greece at New University of Lisbon. Her Ph.D. thesis concerns colonial state formation and fiscal regimes in Portuguese Mozambique and Angola. She also holds a master’s degree in political science and sociology from the University of Athens and a M.Sc. in international development studies from Utrecht University. During her fellowship year, she will examine the colonial legacy and postcolonial labor transformations in Sub-Saharan Africa

Juliana Streva’s work is primarily informed by anticolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer poetics and politics. She earned her Ph.D. in law from Freie Universität Berlin. She also holds a master’s degree in state theory and constitutional law from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. As a Fung Global Fellow, she will focus on completing her book project, while expanding her postdoctoral research on the activations of quilombo and their (im)possible abolitions and world-making. 

Mu’izz Abdul Khalid earned his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and his master's degree from University College London (UCL). He specializes in comparative politics and history, with a particular interest in monarchical regimes and a focus on Southeast Asia. At present, he is a Research Associate at Global Awareness and Impact Alliance (GAIA), the first non-profit and non-governmental research organization in Brunei Darussalam. Concurrently, he works as an adjunct lecturer at the Department of History and International Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). As a Fung Global Fellow, he is converting his dissertation into a manuscript, which focuses on the interplay between British colonial and Bruneian indigenous forces in forming the sole absolutist state in Southeast Asia.

Shozab Raza completed his graduate training at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford. His research and teaching focuses on imperialism, decolonization and revolutionary theory, especially in South Asia and the Global South. Shozab’s research has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Studies in Society and History, while his public writing has appeared in venues like The Guardian and Boston Review. He is also a founding editor of Jamhoor, a critical left magazine on South Asia. At Princeton, he will be working on his book, “Theory from the Trenches,” about of peasants in Pakistan who became revolutionary anticolonial actors and theorists.

Sezen Ünlüönen is a literary scholar who specializes in Anglo-Ottoman encounters in the 19th century. She received her Ph.D. in English from Harvard University, and is currently an assistant professorin the Department of English Literature and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel. While at Princeton, she will work on her monograph, the first book-length study of how Ottoman literary sources depicted British colonies and British colonialism in the nineteenth century.

Christina Jialin Wu is a historian of empires, colonialism and post-colonialism, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in history at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, where she analyzed Malayan youth and their appropriation of two colonial youth movements between 1910 and 1966. The Presses de Sciences Po published her first book, drawn from her doctoral research, in early 2024. As a Fung Global Fellow, she will examine the production of colonial and indigenous knowledge on race and social order in British Malaya over the 19th and 20th centuries.