Late last year, Prof Alf Nilsen, the director of the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, received excellent news. In collaboration with Prof Somdeep Sen, an associate professor of international development studies at Roskilde University in Denmark, he was awarded a major grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. "We received a total of R6 300 000," says Nilsen. "This very generous grant will enable us to pioneer new research in a highly understudied field."

"The project is titled 'Localising diaspora nationalism in the era of the radical global right' and focuses on how nationalist diaspora groups engage in far-right political activism in the name of a homeland. The project responds to a particular global political context. Across the world, we've seen a resurgence of far-right regimes, parties, and movements. Just think of leaders such as Trump, Modi, Orban, and Erdogan, for example. And diaspora nationalists have been very important to the rise of this global far right—in fact, they actively support illiberal political projects, for instance, through financial contributions and lobbying efforts. However, we actually know very little about how the political commitments of these diaspora nationalists are shaped by the context of their country of residence. "This project aims to explore this issue further by investigating the development of Hindu nationalism in the South African context," Nilsen says.

The project extends Nilsen's current research on the rise of authoritarian populism in the global south. "This project takes me into new terrain, focusing specifically on how diaspora groups forge their political identities and activities at the intersection of nationalist imperatives in their homelands and political trajectories in their places of residence," he states.

"I'm also delighted to be collaborating with Prof Somdeep Sen at Roskilde University on this project, Nilsen adds. Prof Sen is an internationally recognised political scientist whose research focuses on race and racism in international relations, liberation movements, spatial politics, settler colonialism, and postcolonial studies. His 2020 book, Decolonizing Palestine, is a pathbreaking study of Hamas as both an anti-colonial movement and a governing party in Gaza, and he is also a prominent public intellectual. "These are the kinds of international collaborations that we need to grapple with the complex political questions that emerge in times of geopolitical transformation and turbulence. I'm glad that CASA can be at the forefront of building such collaborations at the University of Pretoria," Nilsen says.

In addition to Prof Nilsen and Prof Sen, the project will recruit a PhD researcher to join the project team. The project is set to yield many new publications and break new ground in studying global far-right politics in the early 21st century.