Stuart Henry McPhail Hall was a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist, born on February 3, 1932, and passed away on February 10, 2014.
As a prominent figure, Hall co-founded the influential New Left Review in the 1950s. He joined the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in 1964, at the invitation of its founder, Richard Hoggart.
Hall took over as acting director of the CCCS in 1968 and later became its director in 1972, a position he held until 1979. During his tenure, he played a crucial role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to incorporate race and gender, and introduced new ideas from French theorists such as Michel Foucault.
After leaving the CCCS, Hall became a professor of sociology at the Open University in 1979. He served as President of the British Sociological Association from 1995 to 1997 and retired from the Open University in 1997.
Following his passing in 2014, Stuart Hall was remembered as "one of the most influential intellectuals of the last sixty years," leaving behind a lasting legacy in the fields of sociology, cultural studies, and Marxism.
