Dr Anish Chhibber
Dr Anish Chhibber is an untenured abolition geographer, community organiser and facilitator whose practice in, and commitment to, alternative worldmaking and ways of being is rooted and routed in:
- lived/living experience of violence and conflict transformation;
- deep local bonds and collective care making in East London; and
- grassroots anti-hierarchical organising against police and border violence for nearly ten years.
Currently a Research Assistant in Health Equity at Queen Mary University of London, Anish facilitates youth-led research on violence and mental health in Tower Hamlets.
They are a Visiting Lecturer in Critical Criminology at the University of Hertfordshire, teaching on the module 'Violence in Society'.
Anish is also a Trustee and Accountability Lead at OpenEdge: Transforming Conflict, and continues to organise locally in ways that seed alternative possibilities for living amidst, against and beyond racialised state violence.
Recently awarded a PhD in Geography from Northumbria University, their doctoral thesis traced paths of emergence in the making of radical Black, Asian and antiracist defence collectives resisting racialised state violence in late-twentieth-century London.
Situated at the intersection of political, historical, feminist and abolition geography, this work illuminates how less visible space-times of resistance (such as networks of interdependence, grassroots collective care interventions and emotional geographies) open up possibilities for broader resistance formations, alternative worlds and other ways of being (such as anti-deportation campaigns, the obsolescence of policing, and antiracist subjectification)
They have previously held fractional teaching and research positions in the Department of Politics and International Studies (SOAS, University of London) and the Global Disability Innovation Hub (UCL).
Anish also holds an MA in Culture, Diaspora, Ethnicity from Birkbeck College, University of London. Prior to entering academia, they were a Youth and Community Development Worker for over five years at several London-Based Charities.