Ali Meghji is a Junior Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, and will join the Department of Sociology as a Lecturer in Social Inequalities in September, 2019. During 2019, Ali will also be a visiting researcher at the Weatherhead Centre, Harvard University. He studied for his BA, MPhil, and PhD (all in sociology) at the University of Cambridge.
Research Interests
Ali’s research interests lie in critical race theory, cultural sociology, and race and class. His thesis explored how racism and anti-racism affect black British middle-class cultural consumption, and this project is currently being formed into a manuscript. Ali is involved in two further projects on race and class: including how black middle-class gentrifiers are positioned in the gentrification of Harlem, New York and Brixton, London, as well as the (dis)similar cultural repertoires of black conservatives and black republicans. Ali also has an interest in decolonial social theory, and is currently working on the historical sociological project of raising awareness of the contributions theorists such as W.E.B Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Oliver Cromwell Cox have made towards political sociology, in addition to a project investigating White supremacy in digital spaces.
Teaching
Courses:
SOC1: Introduction to Sociology
SOC4: Concepts and Arguments
SOC6: Advanced Social Theory
SOC11: Racism, race and Ethnicity
MPhil: Sociology (Marginality and Exclusion pathway)
Graduate Supervision:
Ali is available to supervise graduate students in the areas of critical race theory; race, racism, and ethnicity; decolonial social theory; cultural sociology; and the sociology of class.
Key Publications - Books
Meghji, A. Decolonizing Sociology. Polity (under review)
Meghji, A. (Forthcoming). Black middle class Britannia: identities, repertoires, cultural consumption. Racism, resistance and social change (series edited by John Solomos, Satnam Virdee, and Aaron Winter). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Meghji, A. (Forthcoming). Race and class in 21st Century Britain. Palgrave.
Meghji, A. (Forthcoming). Critical race theory: a (re)introduction. Polity.
Key Publications - Journal Articles
Meghji, Ali. Forthcoming. 'White power, racialised regimes of truth, and (in)validity’ Sentio.
Meghji, A. 2019. ‘Contesting Racism: How Do the Black Middle-Class Use Cultural Consumption for Anti-Racism?’ Identities 0 (0): 1–19.
Meghji, A. (Forthcoming) ‘Post-racialism’. SAGE Encyclopaedia of Research Methods. London: SAGE.
Meghji, A. (2018) 'Activating controlling images in the racialized interaction order: black middle-class interactions and the creativity of racist action'. Symbolic Interaction, Online First, 1-21.
Meghji, A. and Saini, R. (2018). Rationalising Racial Inequality: Ideology, Hegemony, and Post-Racialism among the Black and South Asian Middle-Classes. Sociology, 52(4), pp. 671–687.
Meghji, A. (2017). Encoding and decoding Black and White Cultural Capitals: Black Middle-Class Experiences. Cultural Sociology, Online First, pp. 1-17.
Meghji, A. (2017). Positionings of the black middle-classes: understanding identity construction beyond strategic assimilation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(6), 1007–1025.
Meghji, A. (2017). A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities, interactions, and ideologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa. Sociology Compass, 11(9), 1-13.
Key Publications - Other
Meghji, A. (2017). Politics then and now: the enduring legacy of Stuart Hall. Cultural Studies, 31(6), 1-3.
Meghji, A. (2016). The Colour of Class: The Educational Strategies of the Black middle classes. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(3), 526-528.
Meghji, A. (2014). The Black middle-class and laissez-faire racism in Britain’s classrooms. Sociology Teacher Journal, 4(1), 9–13.
