“Thank you for making me proud to be black in Britain- for giving us place, voice and recognition.” Rowena Arshad, Head of School, University of Edinburgh
“I’ve read some of Stuart Hall’s work as an undergraduate and found it very informative. The academic field has lost one of their greats. May he rest in power.” Shaz Neilson, Birmingham City University
“I’d never seen a black Professor in person before I saw Stuart Hall. You knew automatically he was special because he gave his lectures on BBC TV, the contributions he has made to British academia generally, and bringing Black Britain into the centre of study within mainstream sociology & cultural studies has yet to be surpassed. Respect Due.” Sonia Davis, PhD student, Nottingham University
“He was a hero and a warrior for all of us.” Dr Fabian Banga, Chair and Professor, Berkeley City college
“The sheer audacity of Stuart’s intellectual ambition was amazing. He set out to rethink the mindset of the left by finding answers to the really difficult question: ‘how is it that we can live with what we know to be unjust?’, and then to focus on why the ‘we’ in that question is already misleading. Coming from a background that was at once privileged and marginalised, he has a unique point of entry into this problem. And he brought to it an unusual warmth and humanity, an ability to laugh almost indulgently at the idiocies of those in power.”
“We who studied with him at the Birmingham Cultural Studies Centre did not appreciate fully the breadth of his intellectual programme, developed as the result of an already considerable career. We tended to look to him for certainties and leadership where he wanted to offer doubt, debate and dissent. We scarcely appreciated the workload he had taken on, nor what it meant that he was, for many years, simply the ‘acting’ director after Richard Hoggart’s departure. He absorbed far more insults and disappointments than we knew, but remained always inspiring, always tolerant, always kind.” Prof John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway University
“An inspiration to me and to so many other black people of my generation . We looked up from the racism , sexism and classism to which we were exposed as young children and from the mire of under achievement in which we were encassed we saw Stuart leading the way. He never quite belonged in academia despite being a formidable intellect and he was seldom impressed by its preciousness . He had time for people and introduced us to different ways of seeing , conceiving and being ‘Black British’. He inspired me to strive , to think , to read and to question . He spoke in to the hearts and minds of so many. Thank you Stuart.” Dr Josephine Kwhali, Coventry University
“Professor Stuart Hall’s influence has been enormous, even for those of us who were not fortunate enough to count him as a friend or colleague. His huge outreach as a cutting-edge theoretician and as a fearless social activist has been felt around the world for more than half-a-century, making him the exemplary embodiment of the modern organic intellectual. He persuaded many by means of his deeply rooted political commitment and immense erudition, but still many more through a fantastic personal charisma which won us over immediately by the sheer radiance of smiles and humour, a truly personable public educator who, in addition to his forceful and compelling writings, so fondly introduced us to his native Jamaica and the wider Caribbean in his TV series ‘Redemption Song’, and so freely shared his love of music on radio’s ‘Desert Island Discs’. It is perhaps for this unique combination of theory and practice, and of intellect and emotion, that Professor Hall will be remembered by so many as such major contributor to academic and social life in Britain and the wider world.” Philiip Drummond, Director, Film & Media 2014
“My thoughts go out to Stuart’s family and friends. Stuart Hall was one of our great, great thinkers. Generous, searching and heart-felt, he did as much as any figure in the 20th Century to explore what it meant to be black and British, to explore black Atlantic thought and to grasp the challenges of life, culture and social justice post-Empire. Thank you Stuart Hall.” Dr Paul Warmington, Deputy Director, Centre for Research in Race and Education, University of Birmingham
“I will always remember Stuart Hall and what he taught me: great capacity to listen and respond to your questions; warm generosity; amazing combination of theory and practice, passion and intellect. I will miss his teachings, his political presence in person and through his splendid articles, books, and TV talks. But I will remember him. The first time I met Stuart Hall was in the late 1960s, while I was an undergraduate student at L’Aquila University, where I had the precious occasion to listen to Stuart’s magnificent lecture about what I believe was my first encounter with Cultural Studies. Professors Fernando Ferrara, Lidia Curti, and Catherine Hall were there, too. From then on I met many other times Stuart at the Orientale University of Naples (where I was teaching in the 1970s) and had the privilege to listen to Stuart’s many other interventions in Naples and in Birmingham, on television, and to appreciate very much indeed his passionately communicative way of talking both as a professor and as a generous friend.” Prof Laura Di Michele, Retired Professor of English & Cultural Studies, L’Auila University
“I had not the luck to meet him, but I feel that I know him very well. I am grateful that Hall’s work has helped me to formulate what I have always deeply felt.” Prof Loreta Georgievska Jakovleva, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia
“Without you, I would not have had that basic, simple, but intensely profound language to see the dynamics of race, and the dark dynamics of understanding myself as a postcolonial subject. Without you, I would have even fewer models (a term I think you would have hated) to continually teach me the integrity (personal and political) of being an intellectual….of trying as much as possible to speak truth to power…You are not here, but you are always here…” Dr Raka Shome, Independent Researcher
“Prof. Stuart Hall. Cultural theorist, sociologist, political activist, Marxist, anti-racist, orator. My hero. #RIP God Bless You, comrade!” Roby Fuzi, Padjadjaran University (UNPAD), Bandung, Indonesia
