Dr John Richardson

Research Overview

My research has made a significant contribution to the understanding of contemporary racism and racist discourse. My work applies a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods, combining content analysis, linguistic analysis (corpus and syntactic analysis), visual analysis, rhetoric and argumentation, ethnography and historical analysis. My first research monograph, (Mis)Representing Islam (2004), was one of the first books to analyse the representation of Muslims in domestic and international reporting. I have published in-depth, qualitative work analysing extreme-right wing political discourse in contemporary and historic Britain, with my 2017 monograph welcomed as “a methodological breakthrough in the study of the UK far right”.

I recently worked as a Research Associate on the AHRC funded project #ContestingIslamophobia, examining the dynamics of anti- and pro-Muslim online activism. Using Twitter # campaigns as our starting point, we focused on the appropriation of global ‘trigger’ events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, by right wing activists to create anti-Muslim narratives, and how these narratives were in turn opposed by anti-racist individuals and groups.

COLLABORATIONS AND AWARDS
Leverhulme Research Fellowship: Making ‘memory makers’: Holocaust Memorial Day since 2002
Noble Foundation: Narrating the past, narrating the Nation: The Rhetoric of Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain and Poland
British Academy: Nation, culture and identity in a French language Corsican newspaper

I have also contributed to research teams, helping to deliver client-facing projects for the BBC (Reporting Israel-Palestine), the Commission for Racial Equality (‘Britishness’ during General Election campaigns) the Scottish Government (Community Experiences of Sectarianism), Facebook (A Guide to Online Radical-Right Symbols, Slogans and Slurs) and the Home Office (Younger Audience Engagement with Right Wing Terrorism).