CPD Paper Prize Winner 2026 - The coloniality of exploitation in fast fashion manufacturing in the UK

Professor Andy Hom, one of Review of International Studies' Lead Editors, talks to Susy Williams, University of York, about her paper - The Coloniality of exploitation in fast fashion manufacturing in the UK - which won the BISA Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial (CPD) Working Group's 2026 Early-Career Researcher Paper Prize.

Andy asks Susy what brought her into writing a PhD in International Relations, where she thinks the discipline is going, and of course they discuss her award-winning paper. He also asks what guidance and support she thinks current PhD/early-career academics need.

The prize judging committee said of Suzy's paper:

"This is an excellent and creative intervention, which is grounded in thoughtful primary research. The paper brings the colonial past to the very timely present through interrogating the way in which fast fashion manufacturing in the United Kingdom is enabled by colonial patterns of exploitation. The paper traces ‘sweating’ in the garment industry and the way in which it is endemic in the global North, and particularly through exploitation of feminised and racialised migrant garment workers in Leicester, and how it is tied to colonial patterns that are reproduced internally within the metropole. The paper adds a novel and empirically-grounded analysis of how coloniality manifests and travels through time, particularly in the metropole."