I am founder and coordinator of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI). The Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI) at Utrecht University is intended as a platform for research into postcolonial issues, specifically focused on their application within Europe. The PCI organises activities such as lectures, film series, masterclasses and seminars, striving for greater interaction with society at large. As such it brings together a number of researchers from diverse areas and disciplines, both from Utrecht University and from other universities in the Netherlands as well as from other international partner universities.

The Postcolonial Studies Initiative seeks to engage with issues that concern the analysis of former colonial structure, which may have been abolished but whose at times haunting legacy still remains and informs not just formerly colonised areas but Europe as well. The PCI seeks to engage with such issues from a conviction of the need to articulate diverse theoretical approaches in the humanities and social sciences in reference to current social, political, and cultural phenomena. One area of special interest concerns the comparative study of colonial and postcolonial formations as well as the study of lesser understood, or lesser hegemonic, forms of colonial and postcolonial expression.

The PCI organises annual public lectures by internationally recognised scholars from different disciplines, a new Postcolonial Film Series, masterclasses and workshops by experts in the field, and it proposes a lecture series on New Directions in Literary Postcolonial Studies by international and national scholars working in the fields of literary studies. Furthermore, the PCI offers several teaching formats at undergraduate and postgraduate level and contributes to international research projects in order to give them greater visibility and coherence.

To stay up to date with the Postcolonial Initiative, subscribe to monthly PCI newsletter or follow the PCI here. All archived PCI newsletters can be found here.