Distinguished Service Award for self-confessed “academic misfit”

12 Dec 2024

Professor Claire Alexander receives 2024 Distinguished Service British Sociology Award for her extraordinary life as a sociologist.

Professor Claire Alexander has been announced as this year’s winner of the Distinguished Service to British Sociology Award. 

The prestigious award is judged on service to British sociology and awarded to the outstanding individual who has contributed most to the discipline by leading an extraordinary life as a sociologist. 

Professor Alexander said: “I am proud and thankful to have been awarded this honour by the BSA.  As one of many academic misfits, with a tendency to ask difficult questions in unconventional ways, Sociology for me has been a place of refuge and a space in which to thrive and from which to challenge.  In these difficult times, globally and institutionally across the sector, this is something to defend and cherish.” 

Claire is the Head of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology and has researched and published on race, ethnicity, youth and migration in the UK for over thirty years.  She is a member of the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE). 

Between 2011 and 2018, Claire was Editor of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and she is on the editorial boards of Ethnic and Racial Studies and Whiteness and Education. 

She is also a Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Active Communities Network and was formerly Vice-Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation and the Runnymede Trust.