Robbie Shilliam researches the political and intellectual complicities of colonialism and race in the global order. He is co-editor of the Manchester University Press book series, Postcolonial International Studies (previously Kilombo: International Relations and Colonial Question). Robbie  is a long-standing active member of the Global Development section of the International Studies Association,  and has served as the association's Vice President.

Robbie works with community and academic intellectuals and elders of the Rastafari movement to examine its impact on global affairs. Based on original, primary research, he helped to co-curate a history of the Rastafari movement in Britain, which was exhibited in Ethiopia, Jamaica and Britain and now enjoys an online presence as a teaching aid: www.rastafari-in-motion.org. Robbie is also a member of the grassroots initiative: School of the Sacrament Rastafari University (SOSACRU), which co-curates with community members webinars, summer schools and more.

Currently, Robbie is working on two strands of inquiry:  firstly, a collective project to rethink the discipline of Political Science as to expose its abiding racial logics, and, alternatively, to retrieve and expand the anti-racist ethos of some of its less canonized practitioners;  secondly, a critical consideration of the "free thinkers" of the Black radical tradition - especially Rastafari intellectuals - and their contributions to what we in academia call "political economy". A book - Move Outta Babylon: Rastafari Reason, Black Marxism and the Struggle for Global Justice - will be published with Penguin Books.