Paul Gilroy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Gilroy (born February 16, 1956) is a Professor at the London School of Economics.

Born in the East End of London to Guyanese and English parents. He was educated at University College School and obtained his bachelor's degree at Sussex University in 1978. Gilroy is a scholar of Cultural Studies and Black Atlantic diasporic culture. He is the author of Ain't no Black in the Union Jack (1987), Small Acts (1993), The Black Atlantic (1993), Between Camps (2000)(also published as "Against Race" in the United States), and "After Empire" (2004) (published as Postcolonial Melancholia in the United States), among other works. Gilroy was also co-author of The Empire Strikes Back: race and racism in 1970s Britain (1982) a path-breaking, collectively-produced volume published under the imprint of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University where he was a doctoral student working with the Jamaican intellectual Stuart Hall.

Gilroy taught at Goldsmiths College for many years before leaving London to take up a post at Yale University where he was the chair of the Department of African American Studies and Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of Sociology. He now holds the Anthony Giddens Professorship in Social Theory at the London School of Economics.

Gilroy worked for the Greater London Council for several years during the 1980s before becoming an academic.

Gilroy is known as a scholar and historian of the music of the Black Atlantic diaspora, as a commentator on the politics of race, nation and racism in the UK, and as an archaeologist of the literary and cultural lives of blacks in the western hemisphere.

Gilroy's theories of race, racism and culture were influential in shaping the cultural and political movement of black British people during the 1990s. Along with people like Lenny Henry, Norman Jay, and Ian Wright he has enabled black British people to declare their commitment and belonging to the United Kingdom.