This collection considers academic research engagements with indigenous, small peasant, urban poor and labour social activism against colonial capitalist dispossession and exploitation in Asia and the Americas.

Bringing together contributors from a range of different disciplines, Research, Political Engagement and Dispossession demonstrates how research done for and with these struggles against dispossession by mining, agribusiness plantations, conversation schemes, land-forest grabs, water projects, industrial disasters and the exploitation of workers and forced migrants, can make productive contributions towards advancing their social and political prospects.

Dip Kapoor is a professor in international development education at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is also a board member at the Center for Research and Development Solidarity (CRDS), an organisation in Odisha, India which advocates for peasant and Adivasi-Dalit communities. His previous books include NGOization (Zed 2013) as well as the edited collections Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization (Zed 2015) and Against Colonization and Rural Dispossession (Zed 2017).

Steven Jordan chairs the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at McGill University, Canada. He also currently serves on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Action Research. His previous books include the collection Education, Participatory Action Research and Social Change (co-edited with Dip Kapoor, 2009).