Stuart Hall was educated at Jamaica College and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford (1951-7).
A founder-editor of New Left Review, he taught film and media studies before going to Birmingham University to help Richard Hoggart establish the Centre for Cultural Studies (1964) of which he subsequently became Director (1972-9). He was Professor of Sociology at The Open University (1979-97) and is now Emeritus Professor, and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities, Queen Mary College, London. He has been inter-alia Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, London, President of the British Sociological Association and a member of the Runnymede Commission on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. He has been awarded more than twenty Honorary Degrees from national and inter-national universities, is an Honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow of the British Academy.
Until 2008 Stuart Hall was chair of Iniva (The Institute of International Visual Arts) and Autograph ABP (The Association of Black Photographers) and on the team of the Lottery project to build Rivington Place a culturally-diverse visual arts centre in London.
Stuart Hall has written many influential essays on cultural studies, cultural and social theory, contemporary politics, race, racism and ethnicity, national identity and cultural difference, globalization, multi-culturalism and visual culture. His published or co-published works include Policing The Crisis, Resistance Through Ritual, Culture, Media Language, The Politics of Thatcherism and the Hard Road To Renewal; essays in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies and Black British Cultural Studies. More recent work includes The Question of Cultural Identity with Paul Du Gay and Different: Contemporary Photographers and Black Identity with Mark Sealy. He has made radio and television programmes on a variety of topics including the TV series, Redemption Song for BBC 2 on the cultures of the Caribbean.