Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Prof. Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pretoria and Director of the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa (CASA). He is widely recognised for his scholarship on social movements, political economy, democracy, and development in the Global South, grounded in a Gramscian and historical-materialist approach.

His work examines the dynamics of power, resistance, and state–society relations, with a particular focus on how subaltern groups engage with and contest processes of capitalist development. His research has contributed significantly to critical debates on neoliberal restructuring, authoritarianism, and democratic transformation across diverse Global South contexts.

Prof. Nilsen is the author and co-author of several influential books, including Dispossession and Resistance in India: The River and the Rage (with Peter Nielsen), Globalizing India: Capitalism, Politics, and Resistance (Routledge, 2010), We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014), and Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India’s Bhil Heartland (Cambridge University Press, 2018). His most recent book, Southern Interregnum: Remaking Hegemony in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa (Manchester University Press, 2025), offers a critical re-examination of authoritarianism, neoliberal restructuring, elite political projects, and forms of resistance.