Award-winning author, broadcaster and columnist Gary Younge is joining The University of Manchester, after being appointed as a Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences. The University is one of the UK’s major research institutions consistently ranked as one of the world’s elite for graduate employability.
Gary, who speaks several languages has been an international reporter for many years including a stint at the Washington Post, was appointed The Guardian’s US correspondent in 2003, before becoming their editor-at-large in 2015. He will continue to write for the paper.
Amongst many prizes, including the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, Gary Younge was named as 2018’s Feature Writer of the Year by both Amnesty UK and the Society of Editors for his series on knife crime.
He has written a number of books to considerable acclaim and holds Honorary Doctorates from universities in the US and the UK. In 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Gary says “The Guardian was my first full time job, and I worked there for 26 years – it’s been a fantastic experience. Journalism, for me, has always been a process of enquiry and sharing whatever insights I’ve gathered in an accessible and informative way – that’s precisely what I hope to achieve as a professor at The University of Manchester, and why I’m excited to be joining the sociology department.”
“Gary Younge is one of the leading thinkers and writers on politics and society working in Britain today,” said Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner. “His powerful and distinctive reporting, commentary and film-making have been central to the Guardian’s coverage of some of the biggest stories in the world for the last twenty years, and like many others at the Guardian, I’ve learned a huge amount from working closely with Gary — about politics, about writing, about life.”
Professor Brian Heaphy, Head of the University’s School of Social Sciences commented expressed his delight in the appointment and said “As a journalist and author, Gary’s work has long been grounded in principles of research that makes visible the social and political processes that shape people’s everyday lives, often in very tragic circumstances.”
Manchester University is the only UK university to have social responsibility among its core strategic objectives, with staff and students alike dedicated to making a positive difference in communities around the world.
Visit http://www.manchester.ac.uk for further information.
You must be logged in to post a comment.