Timothy Seidel (Chair of GDS) and Mustapha Kamal Pasha
The Global Development Studies (GDS) Eminent Scholar Award, presented at the International Studies Association (ISA), is awarded annually to a scholar who has made significant contributions to the field throughout their career.
This year, Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Professor and Chair in International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK, and Academic Editor, Third World Quarterly, has been recognised for his contributions. Mustapha’s work focuses on Post-Western IR and draws from varied genealogies, notably decolonial thought, postcolonialism, poststructuralism, critical theory, and classical political economy. Author of Islam and International Relations: Fractured Worlds (2017), which reframes and radically disrupts perceived understanding of the nature and location of Islamic impulses in international relations, Mustapha has gained a reputation as “one of the most original thinkers of Islam and IR of our time” (Anna Agathangelou, York University, Canada).
Since its creation, the GDS Eminent Scholar Award has been given to a number of prominent scholars, including AbdouMaliq Simone in 2023, who works with practices of social interchange, technical arrangements, local economy, and the constitution of power relations that affect how heterogeneous African and Southeast Asian cities are lived; Linda Tuhiwai Smith in 2020, who is a scholar of education and critic of persistent colonialism in academic teaching and research; and Arturo Escobar in 2017, a leading scholar on post-developmentalist transitions who has worked closely with several Afro-Colombian social movements on their territorial struggles against extractivism.
“Professor Mustapha Kamal Pasha has advanced and facilitated debates in diverse sub-fields. He has been an outstanding mentor and leader. Mustapha is a founding member of the GDS and is exemplary in terms of his efforts to facilitate and cultivate critical thinking to address inequalities and injustices.”
Heloise Weber, Academic Editor, Third World Quarterly and Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia
Mustapha has been awarded the title of Eminent Scholar alongside Swetha Ramachandran who received this year’s Edward Said Award for the best graduate paper, and Jordanna Matlon who was presented with the GDS Book Award.
