Dr Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa

Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa is a Belgian Rwandan International Relations scholar and former journalist. She holds a PhD in Political Science/International Relations from Ghent University (2013, Belgium), following the doctoral training programme at the European University Institute (2001-6, Italy) and internships at the European Commission in Brussels and the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris (2003-4). Before joining LSE, she was Senior Lecturer in European and International (Development) Studies at the University of Portsmouth. (2013-21, UK). She is an affiliated Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS), South Africa and a member of the Critical Approaches to Political Science Lab at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.

Visit Olivia's YouTube channel here.

Key words: Decoloniality, Epistemic Blackness, Anticolonial Solidarity, Racism

Olivia's research and teaching is oriented towards the comparative study of global (post)colonialisms. Her work also focuses on ways to decolonise (international) solidarity. Building on epistemic Blackness as methodology, she turns to recovering and reconnecting philosophies and practices of dignity and repair and retreat in the postcolony (e.g. autonomous recovery in Somaliland, agaciro in Rwanda and Black Power in the US, Tricontinentalism and the political thought of Thomas Sankara) to theorise solidarity anticolonially. Her work is informed by abolitionist thought, epistolary and narrative approaches in the social sciences, and seeks to contribute to the decentring of the West and Whiteness in global social inquiry.

She has published in various (academic) journals (British Journal of Sociology, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Foreign Policy, Millennium Journal of International Studies, Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, Postcolonial Studies, Ethical Perspectives, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and Journal of Contemporary European Studies), is the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics (with Robbie Shilliam, 2018) and Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning (with Sara de Jong and Rosalba Icaza, Routledge, 2018).

She served as an associate editor of International Feminist Journal of Politics and sits on the editorial boards of International Politics Review and Review of International Studies. In 2021-22 she was the Section and Programme Chair of the Global Development Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).

She is the former Africa desk editor, journalist and columnist at the Brussels based quarterly MO* Magazine. In 2011 she delivered a TEDx talk titled: Decolonizing Western Minds; in 2019 she had widely watched conversation on racism [Racism Serves a Purpose – in Dutch, subtitled in English] in the interview collective ZIGO [Zwijgen is Geen Optie – Silence is Not an Option].

Olivia is part of the Politics and Human Rights research cluster.

Olivia is BSc Sociology Programme Director and teaches on the MSc Human Rights and Politics programme. She teaches courses on Key Concepts: Advanced Social Theory and Reading Black Thought.