What happens when we consider myths as stories of social relations, cosmology, and ‘natural truths’ in our research?

Join our scholar in residence Ahmed Memon for an engaging masterclass that explores this question. Memon takes myth-making not only as a colonial euro-modern practice, but also as a tool of power to universalize, assimilate, and transform social relations, material reality, and ‘truths’.

Focusing on the mythology about the Indus River in Pakistan, Memon explores how nature itself is shaped by human ideas and how these ideas reinforce racial and caste hierarchies in South Asia. He questions how academic research — whether in law, social sciences, or the humanities — creates and reinforces myths by treating certain ideas as ‘objective truths’.

What if we question academic research practice as a form of ‘myth-making’ where law, social sciences, and humanities are made distinct and separate from ‘truths’ about what is ‘natural’, and what is not?

As he unpacks the myths surrounding the Indus, Memon will explore how people interact with these stories and how they, in turn, are shaped by them. He will invite participants to think critically about cosmological ‘truths’ like nature, material vs. non-material, human, Western, non-Western, and decolonial.

Following the masterclass, participants are invited for a small, informal borrel. 

As part of preparation for the Masterclass, participants are encouraged to engage with the following texts:

• Memon, Ahmed. "‘English in taste, Indian in blood’: caste hegemony in the making of British international legal thought." London Review of International Law 12.1 (2024): 23-45.
• Sharma, Mukul. "‘God of Humans’: Dina-Bhadri, Dalit Folktales and Environmental Movements." South Asian History and Culture 12.1 (2021): 1-18. 
• Fitzpatrick, P. (2002). The mythology of modern law. Routledge.Pg 63-87

Participants will receive the texts after registering. 

Ahmed Memon is an interdisciplinary scholar interested in the intersections of international law, global governance, history and decolonial theory and practice. Currently he is writing his manuscript Assemblages of Coloniality: Violence in the making of Global Legal Order where he redescribes global governance as an assemblage of coloniality. He is inspired by how sociology, and political geography in the traditions of Indigenous, Black radical, anti-caste and anti-colonial community practice interrupt, negotiate and negate orthodox Eurocentric vocabularies of legal thought. He also engages in grounded practices on decolonizing the university through student-staff parternships, specifically with the aim of developing anti-racist and anti-sexist approaches and tools for teaching pedagogy, research, and writing about law within academic practice. See Ahmed Memon's LinkedIn or read his academic profile