Professor Anamik Saha

Profile

I am a researcher of race and media with a particular focus on issues of ‘diversity’ in the creative and cultural industries. After completing my PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, I worked in what was then known as the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds, firstly as an ESRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, then as a Lecturer in Communications. I worked at Goldsmiths between 2014–22 before returning to the University of Leeds as a Professor of Race and Media in the School of Media and Communication. I have also held visiting fellowships at MIT and Trinity College, Connecticut. 

My first book Race and the Cultural Industries (Polity) was published in 2018. In 2019 I received an AHRC Leadership Fellow grant for a project entitled ‘Rethinking Diversity in Publishing’, which led to a report of the same name published by Goldsmiths Press in June 2020. My research has featured across a range of media, including BBC Radio, The Guardian, TES and The New Statesman. I was included in the The Bookseller’s 2020 list of most influential people in the book trade. My latest book Race, Culture and Media, was published by Sage in 2021.

Research interests

My research interests are in race and the media, with a particular focus on cultural production and the cultural industries. I explore these issues through a critical cultural lens, including cultural studies and political economy perspectives.

My PhD was an ethnographic study of British South Asian cultural production in three cultural industries: publishing, television and theatre. I have also studied British Asians making music.

Since then I have developed my research into issues of diversity in media more broadly. This includes an in-depth study of the publishing industry, involving over 117 interviews with people across the publishing industry.

More recently I have also worked with the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity on a project that looked at the crises of 2020 and impact of the pandemic and #BlackLivesMatter on black, brown and Asian people trying to gain entry into creative and cultural industries. My recent research has also explored the issue of digital cultural production and I have worked on a project funded by the ESRC Digit Innovation Fund with Francesca Sobande and David Hesmondhalgh that explores how ‘Creators of Colour’ negotiate and contend with racism online.

As well as my two books my work has been published in journals including Media, Culture and Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Ethnicities. With David Hesmondhalgh (2013) I co-edited a special issue of Popular Communication on race and ethnicity in cultural production, and with Dave O’Brien, Kim Allen and Sam Friedman (2017) I co-edited a special issue of Cultural Sociology on inequalities in the cultural industries. More recently I have edited a special issue of Culture, Communication and Critique (2020) with Eve Ng and Khadijah White on #CommunicationSoWhite. I was Chair of the Ethnicity and Race in Communication Division of the International Communication Association between 2017-2019. In 2019 I became an editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies. 

Qualifications

• PhD in Sociology
• MA in Social Research Methods
• BA in Communications

Professional memberships

• International Communication Association

Student education

My areas of teaching include race and media, popular music and cultural industries. I particularly enjoy introducing media, communication and cultural studies to students new to the field.

Current postgraduate researchers

• Tessa Saito King