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Author: Alana Lentin

Alana Lentin is a Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University. She is a Jewish woman who is a settler on Gadigal land. She works on the critical theorization of race, racism and antiracism.

She is a graduate of the European University Institute where she earned her PhD in political and social sciences in 2002, and the London School of Economics (1997). Prior to joining the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Sussex University (2006-2012). Before this she held a Marie Curie EC Research Fellowship at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (2003-2005). In 2017, she was the Hans Speier Visiting Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York and has previously been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin (2010).

She is co-editor of the Rowman and Littlefield International book series, Challenging Migration Studies (opens in new window)Opens in a new window and former President of the Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies Association (opens in new window)Opens in a new window (2017-20). She is on the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities, Journal of Australian Studies, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, and the Pluto Books series, Vagabonds.

Her current research examines the interplay between race and digital technology and social media. Her most recent research project analysed the use of ‘antiracism apps’ for education and intervention.

Her books include Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020), The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age (with Gavan Titley 2011), Racism and Sociology (2014 with Wulf D. Hund), Racism (2008) and racism and Anti-racism in Europe (2004). She has written for The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, ABC Religion and Ethics, The Conversation, Sociological Review and Public Seminar. She has been interviewed for The Minefield on ABC Radio National, local ABC radio, Japanese television and Korean radio among others. She teaches a Masters course, Understanding Race which is accompanied by a series of blogs and an open syllabus available at http://www.alanalentin.net/teaching/

Radicals in Conversation

I spoke to Chris Browne from Pluto Press about The New Racial Regime for the Radicals in Conversation podcast. You can also check out the audio version here.

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Against ‘Jewish Safety’

I published an article in Mondoweiss arguing against ‘Jewish safety’ as rhetorical support for genocide, building on arguments I make in Chapter Five of The New Racial Regime. Claims that “antisemitism” is being weaponized to support Israel miss that its function has always been to bolster European supremacy. Today, the…

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London Arts and Humanities Partnership Symposium: ‘An Alchemy of the Intentional and the Unintended’

Please join us for ‘An Alchemy of the Intentional and the Unintended’: Theoretical and methodological possibilities of Cedric Robinson’s ‘racial regimes’, a 2-day symposium hosted by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP) organised by Alana Lentin (Western Sydney University), Tom Six (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), Munotida…

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June 25: The New Racial Regime at Manchester Museum

I’m delighted to be speaking about The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy at a special event at Manchester Museum on June 25. I’ll be joined on a panel with local activists, poets, researchers and political commentators, including Lila Tamea, Khadijah Diskin, Hawwa Alam and Hassan Baig. The event…

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Against Definitions

I was invited to present at the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) at Manchester University in April. My talk presents the main arguments in the fifth and final chapter of The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy. A recording is available here. Following Cedric Robinson’s discussion of…

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The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy, out today May 20 2025

The New Racial Regime is published today by Pluto Press. I am honoured that Elizabeth P. Robinson agreed to write the foreword. Here’s a part of what she had to say. It gives a sense of the scope of the racial regime as they work to recalibrate in the face…

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The New Racial Regime: London Book Launch May 8

GET TICKETS HERE Taking the reader beyond the distracting framings of culture wars and moral panics, Alana shows how the attacks on Black, Indigenous and anticolonial thought and praxis reveal the processes through which racial colonial rule is ideologically resecured. The book traces the often chaotic and contradictory restitching of…

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Call for Papers: ‘An Alchemy of the Intentional and the Unintended’: Theoretical and methodological possibilities of Cedric Robinson’s ‘racial regimes’

Coordinators: Munotida Chinyanga, Alana Lentin, Mai Omer, Tom Six, Rachel Vogler This interdisciplinary symposium, which is scheduled for July 3-4 2025, will be hosted by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership in collaboration with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. It will explore Cedric Robinson’s concept of the…

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(Almost) all my Upcoming Talks

I have been in Europe since early April. I started with a keynote at the the ‘Beyond Polarization and Instrumentalization: Antisemitism and Other Racisms’ conference organised at Lund University on 7-8 April. I also gave a talk about the trajectory to my new book, The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy and its methodology…

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Alana Lentin