Before being appointed Professor of Postcolonial Theory and Political Thought in the School of International Relations, Sanjay was Professor in the Department of Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was also founding Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies. Before that he was Reader in Politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has also held visiting fellowships and professorships at universities in Tokyo, Kyoto, Lisbon and Sydney.

Sanjay is an interdisciplinary scholar who has published widely in the areas of modern Indian history, postcolonial theory, international relations and social and political theory, including Beyond Reason: Postcolonial Theory and the Social Sciences (OUP 2021), Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Duke UP 2007) and Marxist Theory and Nationalist Politics: Colonial India (Sage 1995) and two collections of essays translated from English into Portuguese, Humanidades, Universalismo e diferença histórica (Brasil 2021) and História e Pós-colonialismo (Lisbon 2022). Sanjay was a founding editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies from 1998-2020.