Dr Karis Campion

Karis is a Legacy in Action Research Fellow at the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre. She is the author of Making Mixed Race: A Study of Time, Place and Identity (Routledge). Recent work has focused on the relationship between place and race (in particular Black place-making, community and identity), Black mixed-race identities and families, and anti-racism in Higher Education. 

Her current ethnographic research project is examining how barbershops function as counter-hegemonic spaces and key social institutions for Black communities in South London. 

Prior to this role she was a Research Associate at the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) at the University of Manchester and a Lecturer in Sociology at City, University of London (2018). She obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester in 2017 as part of an ESRC +3 studentship. Her thesis examined the macro and micro-politics of the Black mixed-race experience as a personal identity and as an emerging social/ethnic category in Britain, from the 1960s to the present day. Prior to that she completed an MSc in Social Research Methods and Statistics at Manchester.

She sits on the editorial board of The Sociological Review and is an affiliate member of CoDE. Outside of academia she is a school governor.

Books

Campion, K. (2021) Making Mixed Race: A Study of Time, Place and Identity: Routledge. 

Journal articles

Rohini Rai & Karis Campion (2022) Decoding “decoloniality” in the academy: tensions and challenges in “decolonising” as a “new” language and praxis in British history and geography, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45:16, 478-500, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2022.2099750

Campion K, Lewis CJ. (2022) Racial Illiteracies and Whiteness: Exploring Black Mixed-Race Narrations of Race in the Family. Genealogy. 6(3):58. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030058

Campion, K & Clark, K. (2021) Revitalising race equality policy? Assessing the impact of the Race Equality Charter mark for British universities, Race Ethnicity and Education, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2021.1924133

Campion, K. (2021) ‘Mapping Black mixed-race Birmingham: Place, locality and identity’, The Sociological Review. doi: 10.1177/00380261211006325

Campion, K (2019) “You think you’re Black?” Exploring Black mixed-race experiences of Black rejection, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42:16, 196-213 https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2019.1642503

Book chapters

Campion, K & Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2021) 'Bringing Black Mixed-Race Pupils into Focus in British Schooling', in Schecter, S. R. & James, C. E., Critical Approaches to Toward a Cosmopolitan Education. Routledge

Other publications

https://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/25345/bsa_race_and_ethnicity_in_british_sociology_report.pdf

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/universities-must-not-forget-about-bame-students-during-this-crisis/

gal-dem.com/what-its-like-being-the-only-woman-in-the-black-barbershop/

https://discoversociety.org/2019/05/22/rapid-response-royal-baby-archie-and-black-mixed-race-people-in-britain/

blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/posts/2018/10/can-british-universities-be-sites-for-reparative-justice/

https://theconversation.com/diane-abbott-and-misogynoir-colourism-anti-blackness-and-sexism-in-the-uk-110413

(mixed) race/ethnic identity, geographies of race in urban space, intersectional inequalities, Black feminism, youth identities, anti-racism and institutional racism in education.

• PGCert in Academic Practice (HEA Fellow)
• PhD Sociology
• MSc Social Research Methods and Statistics
• BSocSci Sociology

British Sociological Association

Bringing the Black Barbershop into Focus: exploring its significance as a counter-hegemonic space and social institution

My current research is based within the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre. The project is an ethnographic study of Caribbean and African owned barbershops in the South London Borough of Lambeth. The project will examine the social functions of Black barbershops as protected racialised spaces within two neighbourhoods that are experiencing racialised gentrification.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8501-6479