Nael Bhanji

Dr. Nael Bhanji is an Assistant Professor at Trent University's Department of Gender & Women's Studies. As a critical race and trans studies theorist, his research draws upon psychoanalysis and affect theory in order to explore articulations of necropolitics, racialization, and counter-terrorism within an increasingly globalized trans movement. 

He is particularly invested in tracing the affective circulation of expendability, decay, and death in public imaginaries. Nael was the 2018-2019 Visiting Scholar in Sexuality Studies at York University and has taught at Carleton University's Pauline Jewett Institute of Women and Gender Studies, Western University's Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, and the Mark S. Bonham Center for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. His work appears in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, Transgender Migrations: The Bodies, Borders, and Politics of Transition, The Transgender Studies Reader 2, Trans Studies Quarterly 4.1, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Trans Lives in a Global(izing) World, The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities.

Research Interests

Race and Racialization; Necropolitics; Biopolitics; Trans theory; Affect; Emotion; Psychoanalysis; Queer theory; Masculinities; Memory and memorialization; Diaspora; Transnationalism; Political economies of violence; Surveillance; Social Justice