Professor Chetan Bhatt

Chetan Bhatt joined LSE in 2010 as Professor of Sociology and was Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights until 2017. He was previously Professor of Sociology and Head of Department at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. Before this, he taught at the Universities of Essex and Southampton. He gained his PhD (Politics and Sociology) at Birkbeck College, University of London and his BA Hons (Social and Political Sciences) at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He was a member of the HEFCE REF 2018 Sub-panel for Sociology.

Key expertise: Social and Political Theory, Human Rights, Far-Right, Racism, Nationalism

Chetan’s research interests include modern social theory and modern philosophy, the international far- and authoritarian right, liberal elites and identitarianism, nationalism and racism, and the geopolitical sociology of South Asia and the Middle East. His current projects include: the Euro-American far-right, Western left identity politics, Dalit human rights, and ethnonationalist/religious right politics in the South Asian diaspora, including Hindutva and political Islamism. Other projects have included the regulation of Palestinian everyday life; bloggers facing death threats in Bangladesh and the UK; politics, violence and virtue in modern politics; the geosociology of armed religious groups. Some of this work is discussed in his TED talk: Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are.

Chetan is a member of the Politics and Human Rights research cluster.

Chetan has taught for many years on the MSc Human Rights and the MSc Human Rights and Politics. He also teaches Master's courses on Fascism, Authoritarianism, Populism, Modern Personhoods and Identitarian Thought, and Contemporary Social Thought.

Chetan welcomes new MPhil/PhD students in areas related to: the international far/authoritarian right; religious right movements; identity politics and identitarian theory (including queer theory, contemporary LGBTQ+ activism, and second generation decolonial theory); the social and cultural history of lesbians and gay men in 1970s-1990s Britain; right-wing/far-right politics and social media platforms.

His current areas of PhD supervision include: political violence in Turkey; political movements in Syria and Palestine; racism and migrant detention in the UK and Canada; the history of black and antiracist movements in the UK. Previous areas of supervision have included: human rights movements and postcolonial authoritarianism in Egypt; the new European far-right; racism in Danish immigration policy; law and regulation in Palestine; Middle-Eastern cities and heritage; xenophobic violence and informal townships in south Africa; the international counter-jihad movement; memory and atrocity in Argentina; the transformations of political Islamism; gender, secularism and the British state; new modes of Israeli state power and Zionism; diverse families/sexualities; Trinidadian carnival.