Key People (Foundational Theorists)

Summary

All items listed in the REAL resource bank were suggested by research participants of the ‘Exploring Race and Ethnicity on Social Science Degree Programmes’ project, or colleagues at University of Brighton, as resources they had found useful in their own teaching. They are not intended as definitive recommendations from the project team, and readers should make their own judgements as to which items would be most useful and appropriate for their needs. Similarly, the short summaries of each listed item are meant as approximate indicators rather than comprehensive synopses and should act primarily as a starting point for further exploration.

Sara Ahmed

Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer and independent scholar whose work bridges feminist, queer, and race studies. Formerly Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, her research examines how power and emotion shape institutions and everyday life. She resigned from academia in protest against institutional sexual harassment.

Patricia Hill Collins

A pioneering social theorist, Patricia Hill Collins examines intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. Her influential work, including Black Feminist Thought and Black Sexual Politics, foregrounds the intellectual and political contributions of Black women, shaping feminist theory, sociology, and debates on inequality, social justice, and public engagement.

Kimberlé Crenshaw

A pioneering legal scholar and theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw co-founded Critical Race Theory and introduced the concept of intersectionality to explain overlapping systems of oppression. Her work on race, law, and gender has transformed legal scholarship and public discourse, linking structural inequality to the lived realities of marginalized communities.

W.E.B. Du Bois

A pioneering sociologist and civil rights activist, Du Bois introduced the concept of ‘double consciousness’ to describe the inner conflict of Black identity in a racist society. His work, including The Souls of Black Folk (1903), laid the foundations for critical studies of race, power, and systemic inequality.

Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist, revolutionary, and leading theorist of decolonization. Drawing on clinical research and lived experience, he examined how racism and colonialism shape consciousness and society. His works—Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth—redefined understandings of colonial violence, liberation, and identity formation.

Stuart Hall

Jamaican-born cultural theorist and public intellectual, Stuart Hall co-founded British Cultural Studies and transformed understandings of media, race, and identity. His work on hegemony, representation, and “new ethnicities” revealed culture as a site of struggle, shaping debates on multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and the politics of contemporary Britain.

bell hooks

bell hooks, the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, was an American writer, feminist theorist, and cultural critic. Her work linked race, gender, class, and power within “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” A leading voice in critical pedagogy, she envisioned education as a practice of freedom grounded in love and resistance.

Audre Lorde

A poet, essayist, and self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde’s work powerfully links race, gender, sexuality, and power. In Sister Outsider and other writings, she insists that difference be seen as a source of strength. Lorde’s ideas on intersectionality and self-definition continue to shape feminist and anti-racist thought.

Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts is an acclaimed scholar and activist whose work examines race, gender, and class in law, reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare. Author of Killing the Black Body and Fatal Invention, she exposes systemic inequalities and advocates for transformative justice, influencing policy, scholarship, and public debates on race and family.

Cedric Robinson

Cedric J. Robinson was a political theorist and activist whose work redefined understandings of race, capitalism, and resistance. In Black Marxism, he developed the concept of racial capitalism and articulated a Black Radical Tradition, revealing how struggles for liberation transcend Eurocentric frameworks and emerge from enduring histories of collective resistance.

Edward Said

Said’s Orientalism (1978) transformed how scholars understand Western depictions of the “Other.” He exposed how colonial knowledge systems justified domination and shaped cultural stereotypes about the East. His concept of othering remains central to postcolonial, media, and cultural analyses of race, identity, and global power.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is a Kenyan novelist, playwright, and theorist whose work explores colonialism, culture, and the politics of language. A leading voice in decolonial thought, he advocates writing in African languages as an act of resistance, linking literature, education, and liberation in the struggle against cultural imperialism.

Eric Williams

Historian and former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Williams argued in Capitalism and Slavery (1944) that the transatlantic slave trade was central to Europe’s economic rise. His work reframed slavery as an economic system rather than a moral aberration, influencing debates about capitalism, colonialism, and racial exploitation.