Brenna Bhandar

critical legal theorist and scholar

Brenna Bhandar’s primary research has centered on the colonial foundations of modern law, taking property (broadly conceived) as its main focus. This research culminated in the publication of Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership (Duke University Press, 2018), which excavates the co-emergence of racial subjectivities and modern property law in various settler colonies.

She examines how from the 18th century onwards, prevailing concepts of race and racial difference, understood as always gendered in ways specific to each context, were forged in conjunction with economic ideologies that rendered race contingent on particular forms of labour and property relations – captured by the term “racial regimes of ownership.”

Brenna has published widely in the areas of critical legal theory, sovereignty and indigenous rights, contemporary disputes over ownership and property rights, amongst other themes. Brenna takes a fundamentally transdisciplinary approach to her research, and draws upon critical race and feminist theory, critical indigenous studies scholarship, post-colonial theory, political philosophy and legal history