Dr Jon Burnett

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Research Associate (Voluntary role). Jon is a senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull, where his research focuses on issues of carcerality, the political economies of work and punishment, state violence and racism. He is author of  Work and the Carceral State (Pluto Press, 2022). Jon  worked at IRR from 2011 to 2017, carrying out research on the ‘geographies of racism’ and ‘racial violence and the Brexit State’. He continues his relationship with the IRR,  and is author of its report In racism’s echo chamber: government, criminal justice and the Summer 2024 riots which examined charging and sentencing patterns in relation to the orchestrated racist violence in England of Summer 2024. 

Hazel Waters

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Advisory Editor Race & Class. She has retired from the IRR, where she has worked since 1969 as librarian and later editor of Race & Class, and acts in a voluntary capacity as an Advisory Editor.

 

 

 

 

Insa Lee Koch

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Co-convenor of Race & Class Symposium on Criminal (in)justice, state racism and colonial legacies in the law. Insa, who trained as both a lawyer and an anthropologist, is a member of the Race & Class Editorial Working Committee. Her work on intersecting inequalities, political economy and the state inspired the Race & Class Symposium held at King’s College London in Summer 2025. Insa is currently Chair of British Cultures at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Her new book on drugs trafficking, state racism and modern slavery law will be published by Oxford University Press in Autumn 2025.

Wayne Farah 

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Research Associate (Voluntary role). Wayne Farah, is a long-time advisor to  IRR, on race and health issues, particularly in relation to the hostile environment for migrants and refugees. He first worked alongside us in the 1980s when he helped found the African Refugee Housing Action Group and the Refuge Forum and later the Migrants Rights Network.Wayne has over 20 years’ experience of working with NHS Trusts, was formerly the coordinator of the National Black and Minority Ethnic Leadership Network of the NHS Confederation and is currently Director of Partnerships at Novarta & Partners.He has written for Race & Class on ‘NHS England: inequality and incorporation’   and  has contributed articles focusing on the   impact of structural racism on  Covid-19 deaths,  and  the normalisation of scientific racism to IRR News.

 

The late A. Sivanandan

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He was founder editor of Race & Class, IRR Director from 1973-2013 and one of the foremost thinkers on racism, globalisation and black history in the UK. His books, Catching history on the wing and novel on Sri Lanka, When Memory Dies are available. To commemorate his work, Communities of Resistance was reissued in 2019 and a website about his work is available at https://asivanandan.com/.

A page of tributes to him is available here.