Project lead says it celebrates ‘incredible contributions’ Jamaica-born sociologist made to Britain’s culture

Whether it was Thatcherism, populism or the story of the Sony Walkman, Stuart Hall was a public intellectual famed for defining the times. Now a major digital archive of his previously unpublished papers, notebooks, recordings and videos has been launched.

When the Jamaica-born sociologist and seminal figure in postwar Black British history died in 2014 aged 82, his obituary in the Guardian said he had been “among the first to identify key questions of the age”. Hall coined the term Thatcherism and in 1985 warned of the dangers of “authoritarian populism”.