Colin Campbell

Sociologist

Colin Campbell’s association with the British Humanist and Rationalist movement goes back over 60 years, to 1958 when he joined the Rationalist Press Association (RPA) and May 1962, when he was a founder member and first chair of Birmingham Humanist Group, subsequently becoming a director of the RPA. Colin also decided to take the burgeoning humanist and rationalist movements as an object of professional study – his PhD thesis was entitled ‘Humanism and the culture of the professions: a study of the rise of the British humanist movement, 1954-1963’. He gained his PhD in 1967, three years after moving to York to take up a post as assistant lecturer in sociology (see Bishopsgate Institute). The PhD became the basis for a book, Toward A Sociology of Irreligion, published by Herder and Herder/Macmillan in 1971 (a revised and extended edition was published by Alcuin Academics in 2013).

He is currently Emeritus Professor of Sociology at York and remains committed to supporting the British humanist movement in any way he can.

Further details of his academic record can be found on his website.