G ilroy, P aul

Abstract

A cultural theorist, critic, and scholar of black popular culture (who is also a musician and has been a DJ), Paul Gilroy has been in the forefront of articulating a cultural understanding of race and racism in the contemporary world. He was born in London in 1956 and is from an English and Guyanese background (his mother being the novelist, children's writer, critic, and teacher Beryl Gilroy). He attended the University of Sussex as an undergraduate and received his PhD from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. He has held academic positions in both Britain and the United States, including Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Yale University. At Yale he was the Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of Sociology and African American Studies and chair of the Department of African American Studies. He is currently the first holder of the Anthony Giddens Professorship in Social Theory at the London School of Economics.