Brett St Louis BA MSc PhD

Race, ethnicity and racism; black/postcolonial radical intellectualism; sport in relation to race and racism and culture and aesthetics.

I rejoined the department in 2005 having previously been at Goldsmiths in 1999-2000. In the intervening years I was Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol and Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Teaching

I have extensive experience of coordinating undergraduate admissions and am committed to widening participation and supporting the entrance of ‘non-traditional’ students with academic potential into higher education. I am currently Director of Undergraduate Programmes within the department and teach on all three years of undergraduate study. I contribute to the first year courses ‘Critical Readings: The Emergence of the Sociological Imagination’ and ‘Modern Knowledge/Modern Power’, co-convene the second year core course unit ‘Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences’, and convene the third year option ‘“Race”, Racism and Social Theory’. I also teach an MA option, ‘Race, Politics and Ethics’.

Areas of supervision

I welcome applications from prospective MPhil/PhD students in any of my teaching and research areas.

Research interests

My research interests crystallise around three intellectual agendas: the conceptual and practical status of race, especially in relation to the epistemological, ontological, political and ethical formations of racial eliminativism; the possibilities of progressive left politics with regard to building affirmative, emancipatory political projects; sociology of sport in relation to i) the methodologies of bio-cultural racial description and explanation as articulated through a rhetoric of culturalist racism and ii) the cultural and aesthetic significance of sport as an enchanted popular art form.

I am an editorial board member of new formations and Ethnic and Racial Studies journals

Selected publications