The BSA is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Gregor McLennan, Emeritus Professor at the University of Bristol.
Gregor McLennan, former Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol, was one of the world’s foremost scholars in social theory.
Professor McLennan, who died last month while walking in Eryri (Snowdonia), was also the co-author of the leading introductory sociology textbook in New Zealand (Exploring Society), where he was Head of the Department of Sociology at Massey University from 1991 to 1997.
His other books included Marxism, Pluralism and Beyond (1989); Pluralism (1995); Sociological Cultural Studies: Reflexivity and Positivity in the Human Sciences (2006); and Story of Sociology (2011).
Gregor McLennan was born in 1952, the son of Gordon McLennan, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He studied philosophy and literature at the University of Bristol before he moved to the Birmingham for his PhD.
He studied under Stuart Hall at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s and continued to work with Hall at the Open University during the 1980s.
In 1997 he assumed the Established Chair in Sociology at the University of Bristol, where he was also Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies and later, professor emeritus.
His most recent work was a critical evaluation of postcolonial and postsecular social theory in relation to the radical enlightenment and the nature of social science.
He was also a Trustee of the Stuart Hall Foundation and edited Hall’s Selected Writings on Marxism in 2021.
His body was found on the mountain Carnedd Y Filiast on 29 June. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues.
