Profile
I graduated in Politics from the University of Leicester. Then I studied for a Master's degree in Imperialism and Post-Colonial Societies at Birkbeck College, University of London. I obtained my PhD from the Open University, and in 2010 joined the School of Politics and International Relations at QMUL.
Although the subjects of my research have varied over time, a central thread running through all of this work has been an analysis of power and hegemony. How are hegemonic understandings of political phenomena constructed, and how can counter-hegemonic forces be identified and sustained? I have applied this logic to social movements, state-society relations, racial formations, utopianism, and Zionism/anti-Zionism.
My current book project picks up the thread of articulating counter-hegemonic political positions via an extrapolation out of my family archive of Arab Jews. A hegemonic understanding of Jews and the worlds they inhabit/ed across the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region is that these worlds are lost. If not universal, this is a nonetheless prevalent position across the political spectrum, from the Zionist-Orientalist to the anti-Zionist anti-Imperialist. In this project, I aim to trace the way in which this lostness has been constructed, as well as argue that these worlds were in fact never lost, with a recuperation of them being eminently imaginable, and necessary in the current climate of anti-Palestinian genocidal violence and authoritarian regimes across the region.
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Research
Research Interests:
I have published several articles and two books on civil society globally and in Africa, as well as a number of articles on International Development Policy from a Foucauldian and post-structuralist perspective. More recently however my research agenda has evolved into two areas:
- Race, racism and whiteness
- Jewishness, settler colonialism and Arab Jews
Examples of research funding:
Grants:
2015-2017 Historicising Contemporary Africa Rising Narratives, Arts and Humanities Research Council, £175,000
2014 After 2015: Development and its Alternatives, British Academy Conferences Award, £30,000
2012 A Double-Edged Sword: The Millennium Development Goals and Civil Society in Malawi, British Academy Small Research Grant, £7,500
Publications
Books
Gabay, C. (2018) Imagining Africa: Whiteness and the Western Gaze (Cambridge University Press) Recipient of an honourable mention for the 2019 British International Studies Association Susan Strange Book Prize
Gabay, C. (2015) Exploring an African Civil Society: Development and Democracy in Malawi, 1994 2014 (Boulder: Lexington Books)
Death, C. And Gabay, C. Eds. (2014) Critical Perspectives on African Politics: Liberal Interventions, State Building and Civil Society (London, New York: Routledge)
Gabay, C. (2012) Civil Society and Global Poverty: Hegemony, Inclusivity, Legitimacy (London, New York: Routledge)
Journal articles
Gabay, C. and Plonski, S. (Forthcoming) ‘Refusing Citizenship/Studies: Disciplinary incommensurability and Indigenous refusal in Israel/Palestine and North America’, Citizenship Studies
Gabay, C. (2021) ‘What do you call it when Jeremy Corbyn walks into a Seder? Jewishness, Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) and ethical subject-formation’, Thesis Eleven, First View
Gabay, C. (2020) ‘Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better: IR Theory, Utopia and a failure to (re)imagine failure’, International Theory, First View, pp. 1 - 26
Gabay, C. (2020) ‘Exploring a European tradition of allyship with sovereign struggles against colonial violence: a critique of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida through the heretical Jewish Anarchism of Gustav Landauer (1870-1919)’ Contemporary Political Theory, 19, pages251–273
Gabay, C. (2018) ‘Decolonizing interwar anticolonial solidarities: The case of Harry Thuku’ Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Online version: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1487319
Gabay, C. (2017) ‘The Radical and Reactionary Politics of Malawi's Hastings Banda: roots, fruit and legacy’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43: 6, pp. 1119-1135
Gabay, C. and S. Ilcan (2017) ‘The affective politics of the Sustainable Development Goals: Partnership, capacity-building, and big data’, Globalizations, 17(2)
Gabay, C. and Death, C. (2015) ‘Doing Biopolitics Differently? Radical Potential in the Post-2015 MDG and SDG Debates’, Globalizations, 12:4, pp. 597-612
Gabay, C. (2014) 'Two ‘transitions’: the political economy of Joyce Banda's rise to power and the related role of civil society organisations in Malawi' Review of African Political Economy Volume 41, Issue 141, pp. 374-388
Gabay, C. Pugh, J. and Williams, A. (2013) ‘Reassertions of national interest: reflections on the UK Coalition Government's security-development nexus’ Geoforum, 44, pp. 193-201
Gabay, C. (2012) ‘The Millennium Development Goals and Neoliberal Engineering’ Third World Quarterly, 33:7, pp.1249-1265 Death, C. and Gabay, C. (2012) ‘Building States and Civil Societies in Africa: Liberal Interventions and Global Governmentality’, Journal of Intervention and State Building, 6:1, pp.1-6
Gabay, C. (2011) ‘Poverty eradication and the elimination of dissent: The Millennium Development Goals and civil society in Malawi’, Globalizations Vol. 8, No.
Berry, C. and Gabay, C. (2009), ‘Transnational political action and “global civil society” in practice: the case of Oxfam’, Global Networks, Vol. 9, No. 3, 339-358
Gabay, C. (2008) ‘Anarcho-cosmopolitanism: The universalisation of the equal exchange’, Global Society, Vol. 22, No. 2, 197-216
Public Engagement
In a previous project I contributed to the development of accountability mechanisms within a large global civil society network, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (www.whiteband.org). More recently I have become a regular contributor to international news stories on contemporary events in Malawi, and political protests in Africa more broadly. I have also acted as a consultant for a BBC World Documentary on Gender in World Politics. I now sit on the board of the Diaspora Alliance, which exists to combat the instrumentalization of antisemitism by the right and far right.
