Walter Mignolo

is William H. Wannamaker Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities, at Duke University. Mignolo's work, currently being discussed across disciplines and internationally, focuses on semiotics, discourse analysis and literary theory. Since the 1980s, he has written extensively in English and Spanish on the invention of the Americas, the coloniality of knowledge, and the political, ethical and epistemological imperative to decolonise knowledge and knowledge production. His work, which has been translated into Portuguese, French and Russian, includes The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1994 and 2003, awarded the Katherine Kovacs Singer Prize from the MLA), Local Histories/Global Designs (2000) and The Idea of Latin America (2005, awarded the Frantz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.) His forthcoming book, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options is the third of a trilogy, together with The Darker Side of the Renaissance and Local Histories/Global Designs.