Professor Anamik Saha

Profile

I am a researcher specialising in race and media, with a particular focus on ‘diversity’ in the creative and cultural industries. After completing my PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, I joined the University of Leeds—then in the Institute of Communication Studies—as an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow and later as a Lecturer in Communication. From 2014 to 2022, I was based at Goldsmiths before returning to Leeds as Professor of Race and Media in the School of Media and Communication. I have also held visiting fellowships at MIT and Trinity College, Connecticut.

I am the author of Race and the Cultural Industries (Polity, 2018), Race, Culture and Media (Sage, 2022; second edition, 2025), and The Anti-Racist Media Manifesto (co-authored with Francesca Sobande and Gavan Titley, Polity, 2024). In 2019, I was awarded an AHRC Leadership Fellowship for Rethinking Diversity in Publishing, which resulted in a report published by Goldsmiths Press in June 2020. My research has been featured in The Guardian, TES, The New Statesman, and on BBC Radio. In 2020, I was named one of The Bookseller’s most influential people in the book trade. I am currently a co-editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

Responsibilities

• Director of Taught Postgraduate Programmes

Research interests

My research focuses on race and media, particularly cultural production and the cultural industries, using critical cultural approaches, including cultural studies and political economy.

My PhD was an ethnographic study of British South Asian cultural production in publishing, television, and theatre. I have also researched British Asians in the music industry. Since then, my work has expanded to examine diversity in media more broadly, including a major in-depth study of the publishing industry based on 117 interviews with industry professionals.

More recently, I collaborated with the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity on a project examining the impact of the 2020 crises—#BlackLivesMatter and the pandemic—on Black, Brown, and Asian creatives trying to enter the cultural industries. My recent research also explores digital cultural production, including an ESRC-funded project with Francesca Sobande and David Hesmondhalgh on how ‘Creators of Colour’ navigate racism online.

In addition to my two books, my work has been published in Media, Culture & Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Journal of Communication and Ethnicities. I have co-edited special issues on race and cultural production for Popular Communication (2013, with David Hesmondhalgh), Cultural Sociology (2017, with Dave O’Brien, Kim Allen, and Sam Friedman), and Culture, Communication & Critique (2020, with Eve Ng and Khadijah White) on #CommunicationSoWhite. I served as Chair of the Ethnicity and Race in Communication Division of the International Communication Association (2017–2019) and have been an editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies since 2019.

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