125th Anniversary Scholarship in Politics

About the project

The PhD project examines the relationship between race and capitalism in postcolonial Britain through the work of Stuart Hall. With an interdisciplinary outlook, the PhD project will contribute to contemporary debates in fields such as political theory and political economy.

Scholars and activists are now engaged in fierce debates over the relationship between ‘race’ and class, between practices of racialized domination and the systemic imperatives of capital. Within political and social theory, thinkers have turned to the concept of “racial capitalism” (Robinson 2021) to explain how the abstract logic of wage labour exploitation is dialectically related to the racialized logics of dispossession that fuelled European colonial projects (Alami 2023; Chakravartty and Silva 2012; Dawson 2019; Fraser 2016; 2018; Kelley 2017; Melamed 2015; Virdee 2019). By contrast, the new “historians of capitalism” have sought to explain the racialized and colonial origins of modern capitalism through sociologically embedded engagements with specific industries and geographies (Baptist 2014; Beckert 2015; Follett et al. 2016; Johnson 2013; Smallwood 2007; Jenkins and Leroy 2021; Williams 1994). Yet stark disagreements remain over how best to understand the entanglement of capitalism and racism — i.e., whether that relation is a necessary one, or whether it reflects the contingent developments of the modern economic order (Bhattacharyya 2018; Conroy 2022; Go 2021; Táíwò and Bright 2020). 

This PhD project will intervene in these discussions by returning to the work of Stuart Hall. While often known for his thinking on diasporic Caribbean identity and for his critique of Thatcherism, Hall spent decades grappling with Marxism’s inattention to the problems of ‘race’ and racism (Hall [1980] 2021; 1986). In particular, he argued that the breakdown of the social-democratic consensus in 1970s Britain could not be understood without reckoning more deeply with the colonial relations that fueled industrialization and continued to shape British politics through its imperial decline (Hall et al. 1978; Hall 1978; 2017a; 2017b). Yet many of Hall’s insights on this front remain unpublished and understudied, in part because he preferred to write a series of “interventions” in existing debates rather than stand-alone monographs (Hall and Back 2009). 

The PhD researcher will fill this gap by drawing on Stuart Hall’s archive and on the papers of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Both archives are hosted by the University’s Cadbury Research Library, where they were recently made publicly available. In particular, the PhD researcher would seek to answer the following questions: 

• RQ1: How did Stuart Hall’s thinking about the intersections of ‘race’ and ‘class’ develop through his career? 
• RQ2: How did Hall’s work on the Caribbean inform his account of British capitalism? 
• RQ3: Which aspects of Hall’s writings, if any, might help us to understand and diagnose contemporary capitalist formations structured in racial dominance? 

Methodology

This project will require extensive archival research. It will also use methods developed in political theory (namely, conceptual analysis, historical contextualism, and social critique) and political economy (such as Hall’s own conjunctural approach and emphasis on practice-driven theory). The PhD researcher will critically evaluate the theoretical toolkit that Hall developed to understand colonial capitalism, postwar British capitalism, and the racisms that they mobilized in discrete historical conjunctures. Finally, they will also offer preliminary thoughts on how Hall’s analyses might “intervene” in contemporary debates about racial capitalism.

Expected Outcomes

By the end of the project, the PhD researcher will be positioned to make a compelling and substantive contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary debate, one that has sparked interest from political theorists, sociologists, political economists, economic historians, and geographers. They will have written a thesis, but they will also be encouraged to publish thesis chapters as standalone articles, to present their work at seminars and events organized by the Stuart Hall Archive Project, and to attend conferences in critical political economy and political theory. The PhD researcher will also be involved in the hosting of a full-day workshop on contemporary theories of racial capitalism with the two co-supervisors.

Training Support and Development Opportunities

The PhD researcher will have the full support of the supervision team. They will also be encouraged to get involved with the Stuart Hall Archive Project, including with the project’s fulltime archivist and with their regular seminar series and events. In addition to departmental training courses, they will benefit from a vibrant research environment in POLSIS and can attend seminar series offered by both the Political Economy Research Group and the Political Theory Research Group to further develop their network and hone their work.

The Supervisory Team

Sarah Bufkin is an Assistant Professor in Political Theory in POLSIS who works on racialization and racisms. She has written on racism and ideology critique, whiteness and practices of inequality in racialized markets, and the politics of hunger striking in postimperial Britain. Sarah's research has been profoundly shaped by the work of Stuart Hall and the broader Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente is an Associate Professor in Political Economy at the Department of Political Science and International Studies. He researches the international political economy of the Caribbean, with a focus on the region's relations with China. As part of this work, he has actively engaged with and sought to revitalize the tradition of critical Caribbean development thought, wherein Stuart Hall is a significant representative.

References

• Alami, Ilias. 2023. ‘Racial Capitalism, Uneven Development, and the Abstractive Powers of Race and Money’. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 1–7.
• Baptist, Edward E. 2014. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
• Beckert, Sven. 2015. Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism. London: Penguin Books.
• Bhattacharyya, Gargi. 2018. Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival. London; New York: Rowman and Littlefield International.
• Chakravartty, Paula, and Denise Ferreira da Silva. 2012. ‘Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction’. American Quarterly 64 (3): 361–85. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2012.0033.
• Conroy, William. 2022. ‘Race, Capitalism, and the Necessity/Contingency Debate’. Theory, Culture & Society, 1–19.
• Dawson, Michael. 2019. ‘Chocolate Cities: A Brief Note from a Race and Capitalism Perspective’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (3): 425–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2019.1536278.
• Follett, Richard, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara M. Hahn. 2016. Plantation Kingdom. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.72118.
• Fraser, Nancy. 2016. ‘Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism: A Reply to Michael Dawson’. Critical Historical Studies 3 (1): 163–78. https://doi.org/10.1086/685814.
• ———. 2018. ‘From Exploitation to Expropriation: Historic Geographies of Racialized Capitalism’. Economic Geography 94 (1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2017.1398045.
• Go, Julian. 2021. ‘Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism’. Sociological Theory 39 (1): 38–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120979822.
• Hall, Stuart. 1978. ‘Race and “Moral Panics” in Postwar Britain’. In Selected Writings on Race and Difference, edited by Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, 56–70. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
• ———. 1986. ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’. The Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (2): 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/019685998601000202.
• ———. 2017a. Familiar Stranger: A Life between Two Islands. London: Allen Lane.
• ———. 2017b. Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays. Edited by Sally Davison, David Featherstone, Michael Rustin, and Bill Schwarz. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
• ———. (1980) 2021. ‘Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance’. In Selected Writings on Race and Difference, edited by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Paul Gilroy, 195–245. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
• Hall, Stuart, and Les Back. 2009. ‘At Home and Not at Home: Stuart Hall in Conversation with Les Back’. Cultural Studies 23 (4): 658–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380902950963.
• Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts. 1978. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. Critical Social Studies. London: Macmillan.
• Jenkins, Destin, and Justin Leroy. 2021. Histories of Racial Capitalism. Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Johnson, Walter. 2013. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Kelley, Robin D. G. 2017. ‘What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?’ Boston Review, 12 January 2017. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/robin-d-g-kelley-introduction-race-capitalism-justice/.
• Melamed, Jodi. 2015. ‘Racial Capitalism’. Critical Ethnic Studies 1 (1): 76–85. https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076.
• Robinson, Cedric J. 2021. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Third edition. London: Penguin Books.
• Smallwood, Stephanie E. 2007. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press.
• Táíwò, Olúfėmi O., and Liam Kofi Bright. 2020. ‘A Response to Michael Walzer’. Dissent Magazine, 7 August 2020. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/a-response-to-michael-walzer/.
• Virdee, Satnam. 2019. ‘Racialized Capitalism: An Account of Its Contested Origins and Consolidation’. The Sociological Review 67 (1): 3–27.
• Williams, Eric Eustace. 1994. Capitalism & Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Entry Requirements

Applicants will be expected to have a good Honours degree (First Class or Upper Second Class Honours degree) awarded by a recognised University in a relevant subject, or an alternative qualification, or experience of equal quality. In certain cases, a Masters degree or equivalent may be expected in a relevant subject.

Who can apply?

These scholarships are designed to create opportunities and address the underrepresentation of talented Black or Black mixed heritage students in academia. Applicants who meet all of the following criteria are eligible to apply:

1. Students classified as 'Home' for tuition fee payments
2. Members of one of the following ethnic groups:
   • Black African
   • Black Caribbean
   • Black Other
   • Mixed – White and Black Caribbean
   • Mixed – White and Black African
   • Other mixed background (to include Black African, Black Caribbean or Black Other)
3. Not already enrolled on a PhD programme at the University of Birmingham

What does the scholarship provide?

1. Financial Support: Recipients of these scholarships will receive substantial financial support, including a stipend at UKRI rates, which is set at £20,780 per year for the 2025/26 academic year, and will be paid to you in regular instalments. Successful awardees will also have their tuition fees covered at a minimum of £5,006 per year. This support is designed to alleviate the financial burden often associated with pursuing a doctoral degree, such as covering tuition fees, living expenses, and research-related costs.
2. Mentorship and Guidance: Scholarship recipients will benefit from mentorship opportunities and guidance from accomplished faculty members who are dedicated to helping them succeed in their academic and research endeavours.
3. Research Opportunities: We are committed to providing an exceptional research environment. Students will have access to state-of-the-art facilities, cutting-edge resources, and a vibrant scholarly community.
4. Community Building: A key component of the scholarship programme is the creation of a supportive community of Black British researchers pursuing PhDs. This network will foster collaboration and peer support among scholars.
5. Research Training Support Grant: In addition to financial support, scholarship recipients will receive a research training support grant at £2,250 across the duration of the PhD. This grant is intended to support conference attendance, fieldwork, and other essential activities that enhance their research and academic growth.
6. Commitment to Inclusivity: We are dedicated to building an inclusive academic environment that values diversity and ensures equitable access to education.

Contact the supervisor

Once applicants have familiarised themselves with the above project details, they are encouraged to contact the lead PhD supervisor to discuss the project and the applicant's suitability for the project. This is recommended before you submit an application to the PhD project.

The lead supervisor for the PhD is Dr Sarah Bufkin, an Assistant Professor in Political Theory, who works on Black Atlantic political thought and Critical Theory, with a specific focus on racisms, imperial techniques of government, and racial capitalism. More broadly, her research draws on anticolonial political thought, feminist theory, Marxism, and the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. The co-supervisor is Dr Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente, an Associate Professor in Political Economy, whose research interests lie in South-South relations, with a specific focus on China, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Ruben serves as an editor for the Global China Pulse and the People's Map of Global China.

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