Racial Justice Lecture: 'Playing' Race
‘Playing’ Race: Constructions of Race, Gender and Anti-Black Racisms within Sports Videogames.
University of Glasgow Racial Justice Series
Date: Wednesday 21 October 2026
Time: 19:00 - 20:15
Venue: James McCune Smith Learning Hub Room 438
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Dr. Paul Campbell, Associate Professor in the sociology of race and inclusion at the University of Leicester
Dr. Paul Campbell, Associate Professor in the sociology of race and inclusion at the University of Leicester will deliver the third University of Glasgow Racial Justice Lecture.
This is the third event in a series which has been established through the University’s Understanding Racism, Transforming University Cultures (URTUC) programme. URTUC aims to address structural racial inequalities faced by our community and publicly states our commitment to being an anti-racist institution.
The lecture will be held at the James McCune Smith Building room 438.
‘Playing’ race: Constructions of race, gender and anti-Black racisms within sports videogames
How do sports videogames contribute to the reproduction of racial and gendered stereotypes in late modern Britain? Focusing on football videogame(s) as my lens of enquiry, the lecture responds to this question with a deep dive into the myriad and complex ways in which the numerical foundations upon which digital athletes and digital sports worlds are built align with and (re)produce existing and new intersecting stereotypes of race and gender in sport.I conclude by sketching out how these anti-Black (re)presentations of Black digital athletes’ abilities, potential, and emotional (artificial) intelligence manifest within football videogames also contribute directly to many of the anti-Black interpersonal and systemic exclusions that Black communities continue to experience in sport and in their daily lives in 21st century Britain in the ‘real world’.
About the speaker
Dr Campbell is Associate Professor in the sociology of race and inclusion at the University of Leicester, and Visiting Professor at the University of South Wales, Loughborough and the Open University, and National Teaching Fellow. A multiple award-winning academic, Paul's first book on race and local football won the British Sociology Association’s Philip Abrams Prize for best debut sociology book in 2017 and his latest book, 'Race and Assessment in HE' won the British Education Research Association book of the year for 2025. Over the last 15 years, Paul has emerged as one of the UK's leading voices on race and social justice in sport and in Higher Education. His work spans the experiences and constructions of Black female and male athletes and officials in local and professional football and more recently, in digital environments. it also responds to equity gaps for minoritised undergraduates.Paul is Academic Advisor for the Centre for Transforming Assessment and Student Outcomes (TASO) and supports over 10% of the UK HE sector in addressing racial inequalities in their curricular and assessment processes and policies. Paul is also lead editor of Routledge’s ‘Critical Research in Race and Sport’ and Emerald’s ‘Critical Studies in Inclusion, Practice and Impact’, book series.