Apoorvaa Joshi

Visiting Scholar

Apoorvaa Joshi is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research examines the relationship between imagination and materiality, and develops a theory of decolonial imagination, arguing that alternative conceptions of possibility and reality are not merely symbolic or speculative, but constitute material practices through which communities challenge dominant structures and create new social worlds. Her current research looks at how groups facing different forms of marginalization develop shared imaginations of possibility through two distinct sites: contemporary witchcraft practitioners and Kashmiri scholar-activist networks. Through these cases, she examines how people create and sustain radical conceptions of the possible in contexts shaped by violence and marginalization. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics (2012) and an MA in Sociology from Rutgers University (2023).

Participating Years

2026–2027

Radical Imagination: Temporalities and Geographies of Struggle

In a world of deepening crises, of socioeconomic inequities, of environmental collapse, of resurgent fascism and institutionalized authoritarianism, what is the place of radical imagination in creating more just worlds? While some think of the work of imagination as being outside of—at a distance to, or even in a different temporality than—everyday struggle, we want to shine a light on the work of radical practice as a form of imagination. We look to anticapitalist and antiracist organizing and thought, and the complex practices in time and place through which change is not only presented and represented but produced.