Centre For Contemporary Cultural Studies - Noted Staff Members

Noted Staff Members

The Centre is notable for producing many key studies and researchers. Stuart Hall, who became the centre's director in 1968, developed his seminal Encoding/Decoding model here. Of special importance is the collective research that led to Policing the Crisis (1978), a study of law and order campaigns that focused on "mugging" (a code for street violence). This anticipated many of the law and order themes of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in the 1980s. Other noted Centre books include 'Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies'; 'Resistance through Rituals'; 'The Empire Strikes Back'; 'Border Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality'.

Richard Johnson was later director and encouraged research in social and cultural history. The centre staff included Maureen McNeil, noted theorist of culture and science, Michael Green who focused on media, cultural policy and regional cultures in the midlands, and Ann Gray, culture and media.

Noted graduates and associates of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and the Department of Cultural Studies include: Paul Gilroy (LSE) theorist of culture and race, Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths) theorist of consumption, femininity and popular culture, Celia Lurie (Goldsmiths) feminist theory and consumption, Jackie Stacey (University of Manchester, film, cancer culture and science in culture', Sarah Franklin (LSE) science as culture, Debbie Epstein (University of Cardiff education, childhood and youth studies, sexuality and popular culture, Peter Redman (The Open University) masculinities, psychoanalytic theor, Mary Jane Kehily (The Open University) childhood and youth studies, Joyce Canaan (City University, Birmingham) cultures of higher education, Anoop Nayak (Newcastle University) geographies of race, Deborah Lynn Steinberg (Warwick University) science cultures, sexuality and popular culture, Hilary Pilkington (Warwick University) Russia and youth subcultures, Sue Wright (Danish Pedagogic University) cultures of higher education, Hazel Carby (Yale) race and literature, David Parker (Nottingham University), Mica Nava (University of East London) media studies, Chris Griffin (Bath University) girls and youth cultures, and Adrian Kear (Aberystwith University) performance studies and psychoanalysis, Kevin J. Brehony (Roehampton University) historical studies of educational ideologies..

Empirical researchers included David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon, who produced The Nationwide Project at the Centre. Dorothy Hobson's research about the reception of Crossroads was based on her MA dissertation. Another important empirical researcher is Paul Willis, who received his PhD from the CCCS in 1972 and stayed as a researcher there until 1981.

In later years, on the dissolution of the Centre and formation of the Department of Cultural Studies, Sadie Plant, noted cybertheorist and feminist (author of Zeroes + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture), taught there, as did Jorge Larrain, the well-known Chilean sociologist and cultural historian, author of Identity and Modernity in Latin America and John Gabriel, sociologist of race. Frank Webster, a Sociologist with interests in Information Society issues and sympathy for the 'cultural turn', joined the newly formed Centre for Cultural Studies and Sociology in 1999, but left for City University London when the Centre was closed in 2002.