Chetan Bhatt joined LSE in 2010 as Professor of Sociology and was Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights until 2017. He is a member of LSE Human Rights and convenor of the MSc Human Rights and Politics. He was previously Professor of Sociology and Head of Department at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. Before this, he taught at the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex and the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton (the latter as an ESRC research fellow). His gained his PhD (Politics and Sociology) at Birkbeck College, University of London and his BA Hons (Social and Political Sciences) at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. He was a member of the HEFCE REF 2018 Sub-panel for Sociology.

In addition to extensive work over many years on human rights, anti-racism, and social/economic inequality, Chetan Bhatt’s research interests include modern social theory and modern philosophy, the religious right and the far-right, nationalism and racism, and the geopolitical sociology of South Asia and the Middle East. His current projects include: the Euro-American far-right; new social media and the political right; Dalit human rights.  Other projects have included the regulation of Palestinian everyday life; bloggers facing death threats in Bangladesh and the UK; politics, violence and virtue in modern politics; the geosociology of armed religious groups. Some of this work is discussed in his TED talk: Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are.