Nikita Dhawan

Nikita Dhawan holds the Chair in Political Theory and History of Ideas at the Technical University Dresden. Her research and teaching focuses on global justice, human rights, democracy and decolonization. She received the Käthe Leichter Award in 2017 for outstanding achievements in the pursuit of women’s and gender studies and in support of the women’s movement and the achievement of gender equality. Selected publications include: Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (2007); Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities (ed., 2019); Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans: Critical Theories of Decolonization (2026, Duke University Press). In 2023, she was awarded the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship at Stanford University and the Thomas Mann Fellowship, Los Angeles.