Professor Leela Gandhi (Balliol 1986) has been awarded the University of Tubingen’s Alfons Auer Ethics Prize for her work on postcolonial ethics and theory.
Leela Gandhi is John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English at Brown University and a descendant of the non-violent campaigner and civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi. In her work, say the University of Tubingen on awarding the prize, ‘she has drawn on his approach to develop a creative ethics that critically and constructively works towards new forms of non-violence and surmounting the losses and injuries left by colonialism even in postcolonial worlds.’
Named after the theologian Alfons Auer (1915–2005), who is regarded as one of the most important German moral theologians of the 20th century, the Alfons Auer Ethics Prize is awarded by the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Tübingen. In the view of the Faculty, Professor Gandhi’s work is ‘of fundamental significance to Christian theological ethics … Professor Gandhi has developed a postcolonial theory which also throws up a challenge to theology: if theological ethics are to fulfill the ambition of an inclusivity that encompasses all people at all times, it is important that it hears the postcolonial criticism of its own colonialism.’
Her radical work on postcolonial theory and politics, democratic practice and postcolonial communitisation has made her internationally renowned. As well as being a Senior Fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, she is a founding co-editor of the academic journal Postcolonial Studies and serves on the editorial board of the electronic journal Postcolonial Text.
Previous winners of the Alfons Auer Ethics Prize have included the Canadian social philosopher Professor Charles Taylor (Balliol 1952).