David Olali

Dr. Olali's research focuses on the role which scriptures play, especially in shaping of people’s everyday life, relationships, attitudes, behaviors, and in the choices they make. He explores how ideas/concepts can become--transform into-- scriptures, which then form unique categories in heritage constructions. Dr. Olali encourages thinking about the ways human (beings) understand the world around them through the meanings that they make within relational contexts. 

Olali’s broader research interests involve rethinking what it means to be human in the context of economy, society, culture, and politics. He invites us to think critically and creatively about the histories of belief and how this shapes our understanding of meaning, whether in (non-)religious situations. He examines the tension between meaning and meaninglessness, especially concerning religion and its impact on violence and power struggles. This includes how human and nonhuman bodies are involved in these struggles and how these categories challenge and reshape identities and constructed meanings.

As founder and director of the Comparative Heritage Project (CHP), Dr. Olali ongoing work explores ontologies of comparativity, championing studies about constructions and deconstructions, creations, recreations, and decreations of heritage, with emphases on their significance in the communicative-ness of humans. To learn more about this work, please visit the website at Comparative Heritage Project.

Additionally, Olali developed “Comparative Complex Theory” (CCT), a framework for understanding decolonial perspectives on global heritage and scriptural politics and the place of colonized peoples in today’s world.