The British Academy elects 84 new Fellows recognising outstanding achievement in the humanities and social sciences

The British Academy has elected 84 new Fellows in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the SHAPE subjects – the social sciences, humanities and the arts.

The expertise of this year’s Fellows ranges from the cognitive processes underpinning multilingualism (Professor Li Wei, University College London), to the forms of social change associated with the introduction of IVF and other reproductive technologies (Professor Sarah Franklin, University of Cambridge) and the contemporary role of religion in Western society (Professor Elaine Graham, University of Chester).

52 Fellows were elected from UK universities, with a further 29 – Corresponding Fellows – elected from universities in the US, Australia, India, Russia, Italy, France, Singapore, Poland, China, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Sweden, the Republic of Ireland and Hungary.

Three honorary Fellows have also been elected:

• Simon Armitage CBE FRSL, Poet Laureate and Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds
• Baroness Minouche Shafik, Director of the London School of Economics
• Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation.

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship of over 1400 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas. Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. The Academy is also a funding body for research, nationally and internationally, and a forum for debate and engagement.

Welcoming the Fellows, the new President of the British Academy, Professor Julia Black FBA, said:

“As the new President of the British Academy, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this new cohort of Fellows, who are as impressive as ever and remind us of the rich and diverse scholarship and research undertaken within the SHAPE disciplines – the social sciences, humanities and the arts. I am very much looking forward to working with them on our shared interests.

“The need for SHAPE subjects has never been greater. As Britain recovers from the pandemic and seeks to build back better, the insights from our diverse disciplines will be vital to ensure the health, wellbeing and prosperity of the UK and will continue to provide the cultural and societal enrichment that has sustained us over the last eighteen months. Our new Fellows embody the value of their subjects and I congratulate them warmly for their achievement.”

This year's new UK Fellows are:

• Professor Laura Bear FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Professor Duncan Bell FBA, University of Cambridge
• Professor Jean-Pierre BenoÎt FBA, London Business School
• Professor Catherine Boone FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Professor Timothy Clark FBA, British Museum
• Professor Joanne Conaghan FBA, FAcSS, University of Bristol
• Professor Davina Cooper FBA, King’s College London
• Professor Julia Crick FBA, King’s College London
• Professor David Edgerton FBA, King's College London
• Professor Catharine Edwards FBA, University of London
• Professor Adrian Favell FBA, University of Leeds
• Professor Charles Forsdick FBA, University of Liverpool
• Professor Becky Francis FBA, The Education Endowment Foundation
• Professor Sarah Franklin FBA, FRSB, FAcSS, University of Cambridge
• Professor Julian Franks FBA, London Business School
• Professor Anne Gerritsen FBA, University of Warwick
• Professor David Gillborn FBA, FAcSS, FRSA, University of Birmingham
• Professor Elaine Graham FBA, University of Chester
• Professor Andrew Hadfield FBA, University of Sussex
• Professor John Haldon FBA, University of Birmingham
• Professor Anne Haour FBA, University of East Anglia
• Professor Vernon Henderson FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Professor David Hesmondhalgh FBA, University of Leeds
• Professor Ben Highmore FBA, University of Sussex
• Professor Anders Holmberg FBA, Newcastle University
• Professor Richard Holton FBA, University of Cambridge
• Professor Gregory Hutchinson FBA, University of Oxford
• Professor David Knights FBA, Lancaster University
• Professor Susanne Kord FBA, University College London
• Professor Jouni Kuha FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Professor Li Wei FBA, FAcSS, MAE, University College London
• Professor Samuel Lieu FBA, FAHA, FRSN, FHKAH (Hon), FSA, FRHistS, University of Cambridge
• Professor Alison Light FBA, University of Oxford
• Professor Javed Majeed FBA, King’s College London
• Professor Roger Matthews FBA, University of Reading
• Professor Robert J Mayhew FBA, University of Bristol
• Professor Susan Michie FBA, University College London
• Professor Sarah Nettleton FBA, University of York
• Professor Barbara Petrongolo FBA, University of Oxford
• Professor Andrew Pettegree FBA, University of St Andrews
• Professor Dorothy Price FBA, University of Bristol
• Professor Shirin Rai FBA, FAcSS, University of Warwick
• Professor Paul Roberts FBA, University of Nottingham
• Professor Mari Sako FBA, University of Oxford
• Professor Andrew Steptoe FBA, FMedSci, University College London
• Professor Sacha Stern FBA, University College London
• Professor Helen Steward FBA, University of Leeds
• Professor Galin Tihanov FBA, Queen Mary University of London
• Professor Ianthi Tsimpli FBA, University of Cambridge
• Professor Laura Tunbridge FBA, University of Oxford
• Professor Peter Tymms FBA, University of Durham
• Professor Amanda Vickery FBA, Queen Mary University of London.

This year's new Corresponding Fellows are:

• Professor Daron Acemoglu FBA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Professor Aleida Assmann FBA, University of Konstanz
• Professor David Avrom Bell FBA, Princeton University
• Professor Sukanta Chaudhuri FBA, Jadavpur University
• Professor Eveline Crone FBA, Leiden University
• Professor Barbara Czarniawska FBA, University of Gothenburg
• Professor John Dillon FBA, Trinity College Dublin
• Professor David Dyzenhaus FBA, University of Toronto
• Professor Katalin É. Kiss FBA, Hungarian Research Center for Linguistics
• Professor Susanna Elm FBA, University of California Berkeley
• Professor Marcella Frangipane FBA, Sapienza University of Rome
• Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr FBA, Harvard University
• Professor Katherine Gibson FBA, Western Sydney University
• Professor Annette Gordon-Reed FBA, Harvard University
• Professor Sergey Ivanov FBA, National Research University, Higher Economic School, Moscow
• Professor Sarah Kenderdine FBA, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
• Professor Philip Kitcher FBA, Columbia University
• Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings FBA, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta FBA, Princeton University; Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
• Professor Kobena Mercer FBA, Bard College
• Professor Wanda J Orlikowski FBA, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Professor Şevket Pamuk FBA, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
• Professor Adam Przeworski FBA, New York University
• Professor Xinjiang Rong FBA, Peking University
• Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak FBA, Columbia University
• Professor Stefan Vogenauer FBA, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt
• Professor Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba FBA, Institute of Arts, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Professor Brenda Yeoh FBA, National University of Singapore
• Professor Barbie Zelizer FBA, University of Pennsylvania

This year's new Honorary Fellows are:

• Professor Simon Armitage CBE, Hon FBA, FRSL, University of Leeds
• Baroness Minouche Shafik Hon FBA, London School of Economics and Political Science
• Mr Darren Walker Hon FBA, President of the Ford Foundation.