Professor Adrian Favell

Profile

As of Oct 2022, I am Visiting Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy. I was previously Chair in Sociology and Social Theory, and Director of the Bauman Institute. I now direct the Radical Humanities Laboratory at University College Cork.

I joined the School in August 2015, from Sciences Po, Paris, where I was a Professor of Sociology. Before that, I was Professor of European and International Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Professor of Sociology at UCLA.

I am an interdisciplinary sociologist with a background in human geography, political science, political philosophy and comparative literature, and have a strong interest in mixed methods (qualitative/quantitative), research design, and the philosophical foundations of social research.

My inaugural lecture at Leeds introduced current research towards a book I am writing about socially engaged “post-growth” art and architecture in Japan since the end of its economic bubble in the early 1990s. The book project has been supported by funding from the Toshiba International Foundation.

I am also working on several projects related to immigration, integration and citizenship that map out the foundations of what I call “political demography”: how an “us and them” world of territorialised populations, borders, and categories of migration/mobilities, citizens/aliens and majorities/minorities, is sustained to uphold a global system of nation-states founded on massive global inequalities. In February 2022, I published The Integration Nation: Immigration and Colonial Power in Liberal Democracies with Polity Press.

At Leeds, I currently direct the ESRC funded Northern Exposure project, that is looking at Brexit-related sources of political disaffection concerning race, nation, poverty and marginalisation in large towns and small cities across the North of England.

I am associate editor of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and on the editorial committee of Journal of Common Market Studies. I am also Professorial Academic Associate of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Norwich, and a chercheur associé of the Centre d’études européennes de politique comparée (CEE), Sciences Po.

Please see my personal website for further information, links to publications, and up to date information on new research.

Further links:

Adrian Favell (personal website)

aLTERNATE fUTURES (personal blog site)

EUCROSS

PIONEUR

POPMOB (Political Demography Seminar)

Research interests

• urban, regional and global studies
• migration/mobilities
• nations, nationalism and citizenship
• contemporary art and architecture
• Europe/EU, Japan/East Asia, Turkey, India
• analytical and critical social theory
• post-growth economy, culture and society.

Research groups and institutes

• The Bauman Institute
• Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies
• Leeds Social Science Institute

Current postgraduate researchers

• Sel Lee
• Kheira Arrouche
• Tesfalem H. Yemane
• Ayu Kusumastuti