Valerie Momas

Ph.D. researcher in Politics. My doctoral thesis politicises the concept of time and temporality to contend with the elusive traces and lingering presence of colonialism in post-colonial states. Theoretically, it combines hauntological studies with affect theory through the concept of Affective Hauntologies to explicate an understanding of colonialism as an absence/presence that materialises through affective encounters instead of relying on political and economic super-structures. Empirically, it applies this theoretical framework onto the Sarawakian Nationalism movement in Malaysia. It thereby aims to form an understanding of the 'time of colonialism' through fragmented temporalities embodied within everyday and mundane affective encounters.


My wider research interests include practices of knowledge production, Racial Capitalism, decolonial theorisations of time and space, postcolonial and decolonial theory, non-Western critical political theory and embodied approaches to political research.

My project is supervised by Dr. Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Dr. Michael Magcamit