Professor Paul Gilroy is one of the world’s most influential academic intellectuals with a distinguished career of Professorships held at leading universities in the UK and USA.
He was first appointed Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London in 1997 and in the absence of any corrective information from other sources it could be posited that he was the University of London’s first black professor. He is currently Professor of the Humanities and Founding Director, Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism & Racialisation at UCL (University College London).
The front cover of his first monograph has a striking portrait photograph by the Observer’s legendary photojournalist Jane Bown. A proud black British serviceman stands to attention at a Remembrance occasion wearing seven Second World War medals, but the title: ‘There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack’ strikes the discordant and critical note- for the subtitle of the book is ‘The cultural politics of race and nation.’
It was first published by Unwin Hyman Ltd in 1987 and reprinted by Routledge from 1992. At the time Paul Gilroy was Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths’ College. He had taught at South Bank University and the University of Essex and held a Visiting Professorship at Yale.