We are delighted to announce Professor Bridget Fowler (University of Glasgow) is the 2025 winner of the Distinguished Service to British Sociology Award. This prestigious award is judged on service to British sociology and awarded to the outstanding individual who has contributed most to the discipline by leading an extraordinary life as a sociologist.

On receiving the award, Professor Fowler said, “I am deeply honoured by this award. But I would like to take this opportunity to refer to the perils that menace sociology at present. I was born in 1943: our generation enjoyed, through the 1960s and early 70s, a period of unprecedented access to material necessities and scholarships for both middle-class and even most working-class people. Those conditions have long gone; instead, we see the rise of unemployment and of militarism. In a world as dangerous as the present, in which the threat of fascism comes even from our allies, we must anticipate and practice acts of solidarity and resistance. I see sociology as particularly vulnerable for early targeting by universities. In the months to come, we need to remain ultra-vigilant so as to stand up not just for our discipline, but also for critical racist, feminist, social-democratic and Marxist thought more broadly, for exiled academics and immigrants, and for the rejection of redundancies.”

Bridget is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow, specialising in the sociology of culture, Marxist-feminist thought and social theory more broadly.

The judging panel and the BSA extend their warmest congratulations.