David Olali

David Olali focuses on the role of heritage and similar concepts in everyday life, especially in how they shape people’s relationships, psychology, culture, and politics. He explores how ideas that start as everyday language or concepts can be re-labeled or re-purposed as "scriptures." He encourages us to think about how humans understand the world, particularly how they make meaning in real life, through the ontology of comparativity, which looks at different ways of being human and making sense of the world.

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.

Olali is also the Founder and Director of the Comparative Heritage Project, which studies how heritage is created, shared, and spread, emphasizing its importance in human existence. You can learn more at the 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.