Shaunna Rodrigues
Core Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization
Shaunna Rodrigues is a scholar of political thought whose research bridges the intellectual traditions of liberal imperialism, anticolonialism, constitutionalism, postcolonial democracy, and AI ethics. Her work examines how political communities justify democratic self-rule, legal authority, political legitimacy, and the creation and use of Artificial Intelligence after empire.
Her research and teaching are driven by a commitment to rethinking the foundations of political thought through the lens of anticolonial ethics, and contemporary struggles for self-respect in the context of diverse democracies and rapid technological transformation. She explores how historical traditions of justification shape modern debates on citizenship, democratic participation, and emergent technologies in political governance.
Research
Shaunna’s first book project, Justification After Empire: Anticolonial Ethics, Self-Respect, and the Reinvention of Political Thought, examines how political communities justify democratic self-rule, the authority of the law, and the legitimacy of their governments after empire. In it, she interrogates how justificatory discourse—the language through which democracy, legal authority, and political legitimacy is articulated, justified, and contested—has been transformed by anticolonial ethics. She argues that internally varied anticolonial ethics have transformed justificatory discourse by exposing how established views that reinforce categories shaped by modern empires, like race and religion, and pre-colonial modes of categorization, like caste, religious orthodoxy, and patriarchy, structure misleading universal criteria of modern political thought.
By critically challenging imperial and precolonial hierarchies, anticolonial ethics reinvented political thought by proposing broader criteria for the following: how to categorize and therefore structure social and political life, how to reason, what it means to be equal to other humans and think universally for all humans, how to gain self-respect, what counts as knowledge and public reason. Shaunna argues that these broader criteria provide us with ethical and constitutional means of incorporating diverse modes of justification into the legitimation or refusal of political and legal principles and authority. One of the major claims of this book is that anticolonial ethics are relevant not simply because they opposed imperial rule but because they restructured the grounds of justificatory discourse across the world.
Grounding its analysis in the anticolonial reconstruction of Liberalism, Buddhism, and Islam, this book examines how self-respect emerged as a major justification across their reconstruction for challenging hierarchical imperial and pre-colonial social and political ideas. Self-respect conceptualized by anticolonial ethics generated a political refusal of social humiliation due to racist, casteist, and majoritarian logics, demanded greater recognition of diverse excellences and their capacity to shape associational life in the public domain, and enabled a cumulative learning of the historical processes that enabled or limited self-respect at the local, national, and global levels. In doing so, it has been an exemplary force in making justification in contemporary constitutional democracies not merely a matter of securing institutional stability or legitimating state power but an evolving groundwork through which citizens contest hierarchy, reframe moral and political obligations, and reimagine democratic life. It applies this groundwork to three major questions of our time: public protests and social movements related to immigration and citizenship, popular reinterpretations of constitutionalism across liberal democracies, and the governance of human-AI relationships.
Related Publications can be found here.
Shaunna’s research engages with broader postcolonial and contemporary debates on political legitimacy. She has published on topics such as how Islamic thinkers have justified democracy as a response to the challenges of pluralism, how constitutionalism has historically been shaped by anti-caste movements, and how legal frameworks in postcolonial states have mediated political inclusion and exclusion. Her publications include The Place of Political Membership: Abul Kalam Azad’s Critique of Borders and Nations (Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East), Excluded Areas as the Limits of the Political: The Murky Boundaries of Scheduled Areas in India(The International Journal of Human Rights), and Self-Respect as a Primary Political Ideal: Ambedkar’s Challenge to Political Theory (Oxford University Press).
Her recent research also considers how colonial modes of classification—once used to regulate populations through race, caste, and religious identity—persist in contemporary AI systems, shaping access to rights, resources, and civic participation. By drawing connections between historical forms of justification and emerging technological challenges to public life, Rodrigues aims to contribute to critical discussions on the ethics of AI, the global governance of technology, and the role of public reason in shaping the future of democracy. She explores how AI-driven governance replicates colonial and postcolonial patterns of categorization and exclusion, raising critical questions about algorithmic justice, data sovereignty, and justification after artificial intelligence.
Teaching
At Columbia University, Shaunna teaches the Columbia Core Curriculum in Contemporary Civilization. Her teaching integrates classic texts in political thought with perspectives from non-Western traditions, encouraging students to critically engage with foundational concepts in political legitimacy, authority, and democracy.
In the past, she has also independently taught global core courses at Columbia University, including Gandhi and His Interlocutors, a course that examines the philosophical, political, and social debates surrounding Gandhi’s anticolonial thought and action, engaging with critics and interlocutors from a range of ideological and historical perspectives.
She has also taught courses on Anticolonialism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy in South Asia, which examines how anticolonial thought shapes the political present and future of South Asia by exploring its impact on constitutionalism, democracy, and social transformation, engaging themes such as anticolonial worldmaking, contesting race, anti-caste assertion, Islamic political thought, the reconstruction of South Asian religions, constitutionalism, representation, secularism, and emerging debates on environmental rights and data governance.
CV and Education
Shaunna Rodrigues’ CV is available here.
Shaunna holds a B.A. in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, an M.A. and M.Phil. in Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and an M.A. and M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University, New York.
She was an Early Career Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia from 2023-2024 before joining the faculty as a Core Lecturer in Contemporary Civilization.
Digital Projects
Shaunna started the Common Worlds project in January 2025 with Prof. Valerian Rodrigues in order to create and post short-form videos on contemporary academic writing related to anticolonial thought and action on social media.
Common worlds interrogates the political philosophy of Bhim Rao Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule, the medieval Indian poet, Sant Kabir, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many others who have shaped anticolonialism and democracy in the postcolonial world. In doing this, it aims to clarify how anticolonial thought reconstructed ideas of equality, self-respect, democracy, human dignity, constitutionalism, representation, and justice.
Their discussions can be found in short videos on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and Tiktok.
Shaunna’s personal website is www.shaunnarodrigues.com.