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Dr Ben Gidley

Positions held:
  • Reader in Sociology and Psychosocial Studies, School of Social Sciences
  • Research Associate, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism; School of Social Sciences
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Ben Gidley studied Anthropology as an undergraduate and Urban Studies at MA level and has a PhD in Sociology (on citizenship and belonging among East London Jewish radicals in the early twentieth century) from the University of London. Before coming to Birkbeck, he worked in interdisciplinary research centres on urban studies and migration at Goldsmiths University of London and at the University of Oxford. During that period, he was involved in several policy-engaged research projects on topics around migration, integration and diversity, funded by research councils, charitable trusts, the European Union and government departments. He is currently working on projects to do with antisemitism and Muslim-Jewish encounters, as well as teaching psychosocial studies and sociology at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

    Highlights

    Qualifications

    • PhD Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London
    • MA Contemporary Urban Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Director of Research and Sociology REF lead, Psychosocial Studies

    Professional memberships

    • Board member, European Sociological Association Research Network 31 on Racism and Antisemitism

      Board member and social media officer, British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies

      Founder member, Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment

    ORCID

    0000-0003-2492-1384
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Contemporary forms of racialisation (including antisemitism and Islamophobia) and intercultural encounter
    • Diaspora, diversity and migration
    • Urban studies and urban sociology
    • Port cities, transnationalism, arrival quarters, Blue Humanities and "blue social sciences"
    • Conspiracy theories, disinformation, online antisemitism
    • Fascism and anti-fascism

    Research overview


    My research has drawn on a range of methodological approaches, including participatory action research, visual methods, archival research and ethnography. My research agenda has largely been around the question of how we live together with difference. My focus has been on urban contexts, including a long-term ethnographic engagement with Southeast London and historical work in East London – although increasingly setting this in a comparative European context. I also have an interest in British Jews, both in relation to wider diaspora formations and in relation to the history and politics of British multiculture (Turbulent Times, written with Keith Kahn-Harris, was the first sociological monograph on British Jews for several decades), on understanding different racisms comparatively (Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, co-edited with James Renton, was a breakthrough volume in this field), and on Jewish-Muslim encounters (Jews and Muslims in Europe: Jews and Muslims in Europe: Between Discourse and Experience, co-edited with Sami Everett, explores this topic).

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research clusters and groups

    • Steering Group member, Urban Intersections Experimental Collective, Birkbeck Institute for Social Research

    Research projects

    Ethical Monotheism.

    Abstract

    This project was led by Professor Stephen Frosh and included Ruth Sheldon as a postdoctoral fellow and Lenita Törning as a doctoral student. It explored the ethics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the religious identities of their followers, through a case study of interfaith youth activists and a case study of ethical neighbouring in East London.

    Funded by
    Exilarch's Foundation
    Outcomes

    Sheldon, Ruth (2021) Locating an elusive ethics: surface and depth in a Jewish ethnography. In: Strhan, A. and Robbins, J. and Henig, D. (eds.) Ethics Between Philosophy and Social Theory An Interdisciplinary Approach to Finding the Good in the World. London, UK: Bloomsbury

    Sheldon, R. (2019). On Learning from the margins: Jewish nonreligious grammars within a Secular-Protestant landscape. Secularism and Nonreligion, 8: 8, pp. 1–6.

    Frosh, S. and Sheldon R. (2019) Transmission, relationality, ethnography, Angelaki 24 (3), pp. 117-134.

    Robinson, K. and Sheldon, Ruth (2019) Witnessing loss in the everyday: community buildings in Austerity Britain. The Sociological Review 67 (1), pp. 111-125.

    Smith, J.D., Torning, L., Gidley, B. and Sheldon, R. (2019) Hate Crime, Faith and Belonging. Project Report. Faith & Belief Forum, London.

    Das, V., Stonebridge, L. and Rowlands, A. (2018) Podcast: Ethics and the Neighbour. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, 4 June 2018.

    Winter, A., Jhutti-Johal, J., Gidley, B., Whine, M., Mir, S., and Ali, M. (2018) Podcast: Roundtable on Hate Crime, Faith and Belonging in London. Faith & Belief Forum, London.

    Muslim-Jewish encounter, diversity & distance in urban Europe: religion, culture and social Model, ENCOUNTERS.

    Abstract

    Project leadership:

    Dr. Ben Gidley, Birkbeck University of London, Department of Psychosocial Studies (Main Applicant and Principal Investigator, UK)

    Professor Dr. Anne-Sophie Lamine, Social Science Faculty, University of Strasbourg (Principal Investigator, FR)

    Professor Dr. Steven Vertovec Ph.D., Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften, Göttingen (Principal Investigator, DE)

    Professor Dr. Matthias Koenig, Heidelberg University, Max-Weber-Institute for Sociology (Co-Investigator, DE)

     Dr Sami Everett, Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften, Göttingen (Research Co-ordinator)

    Funded by the Open Research Area (ORA) for the Social Sciences, this joint research project studies intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounters as exemplified by Jews and Muslims in urban Europe. The largest European populations of these two groups - overwhelmingly urban, concentrated in the same cities, and, strikingly, often in the same neighbourhoods - are in France, Germany and the UK, countries which on the face of it have followed different models of framing majority-minority relations, creating ideal conditions for a comparative study of the possibilities of living together in urban Europe. Although previous academic studies indicate that negative attitudes to Jews and to Muslims correlate with each other in wider society, current public discourse has instead emphasised growing antagonism between them, relating to events in the Middle East (including the Israel/Palestine conflict) and to the rise of Islamist terror and its counteraction. For instance, commentators have pointed to Muslims as key perpetrators of antisemitism. However, there is some ethnographic evidence that relations in urban neighbourhoods are often more complex: everyday commercial exchange, cultural traffic within music and arts scenes, spontaneous and institutionalised interfaith initiatives, nostalgic attempts to retrieve periods of conviviality, and banal contact in the street are among the many forms these relations can take. To address the lack of empirical and conceptual research of encounters between these two minorities, the project pursues a comparative research agenda that combines attitudinal quantitative data analysis with qualitative methods (ethnographies and discourse analysis).

    The transnational collaborative project explores the specificities of and commonalities between  Muslim-Jewish encounters in urban Europe, shaped by different national histories of integration including the place of religion in social and political life, but also by local arrangements of diversity, to better understand how different types of relations might arise. At the national scale, this includes an examination of migration and colonial histories, and of classical models – British "pluralism", French "republicanism", German "federalism" – that involve different settlements between the public sphere, national and ethnic identities, and confessional or religious diversity. However, as the picture can radically differ on local level, the project will be grounded in urban sites: two diverse city-regions in each country including significant Jewish and Muslim populations with distinctive histories and differing approaches to urban governance. The project advances interdisciplinary collaboration across six leading European research universities, involving sociologists, anthropologists, urbanists and migration policy experts, with a history of collaboration. 

    Funded by
    Economic and Social Research Council

    Post doctoral staff

    • Daniella Shaw
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions external to Birkbeck:
    1
    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    7

    My current doctoral students are: Dionysios Mitropoulos ("From Indignation to Collective Action’: Subjectivity, Critique, and Resistance in times of Crisis", with Sasha Roseneil), Ieisha James ("Bordering Whiteness: Encountering the racialised subjectivities of different generations of Italian women living in London through biographical narratives in the context of Brexit", ESRC-UBEL funded, with Brendan McGeever), Hannah Reeves ("Sedimenting the affect: (re)storying encounters with Crossbones Graveyard", ESRC-UBEL funded, with Margarita Palacios), Sergio Calderon Harker ("Containing the 'bad body': coloniality and detention in Fortress Europe", ESRC-UBEL funded, with Margarita Palacios), Jamila Ayesha Thompson (on UK black women's cultural activism, ESRC-UBEL funded, with William Ackah), Linda Eniola Adeyemo (on Afro-Spanishness, ESRC-UBEL funded, with Silvia Posocco), Haydar Allami (on the Shi'ite Kurdish diaspora in the UK, ESRC-UBEL funded, with Olivia Sheringam), and Antoinne Dwen Kerr-Graham (on racism, criminal justice and predictive technologies, with Bernard Keenan).

    I am the second supervisor of Rachel Kupperman ("‘Mum’s Army’: a psychosocial exploration of the construction of maternal labour and its effects on the lived experience of Teaching Assistants in primary education", with Stephen Frosh) and Carlo Palombo ("My flesh and I: experimenting with freedom and radical posthuman subjectivity", with Margarita Palacios).

    Past students at Birkbeck include Anthony Nicholls ("An empirical study of how contemporary young Jewish men understand their masculinity in combination with their Jewishness and Britishness", with Stephen Frosh) and Lenita Torning ("Building Bridges, Negotiating Boundaries: Young Christians', Jews' and Muslims' experiences of interfaith work in the UK", funded by Dangoor Educational, with Stephen Frosh).

    I welcome applications from MPhil/PhD students and visiting research students who wish to carry out research on: urban ethnography, lived experience of diversity, comparative urbanism, diasporic belonging; antisemitism, particularly in relation to other forms of racialisation; Anglo-Jewish history and sociology, Jewish/non-Jewish relations; urban social movements; anti-racism; fascism and anti-fascism; South and East London.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • HAYDAR ALLAMI
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Feyli Kurds in the United Kingdom
    • IEISHA JAMES
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Bordering on Whiteness? An intergenerational study of the racialised subjectivities of Italian migrants living in post-Brexit London.
    • SERGIO CALDERON HARKER
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Rehearsals of refusal: thinking through border refusals accross the European detention regime

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Hate: On the Power of the Negative (SSPA070S4)
    • Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
    • Racism and Antisemitism (SSPA096S6)
    • The Self, Society and the State (SSPA163S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Review

    Book Section

    Editorial

    Monograph

    Other

    External Repositories

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    Media

    I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

    • Antisemitism
    • Hate crime
    • Jewish communities
    • Far right
    • London
    • Multicultural neighbourhoods
    • Disinformation and conspiracy theories