Laurie
Taylor is visiting professor in the department of politics and sociology at
Birkbeck College, University of London. He was recently made a Fellow of
Birkbeck College and also holds visiting professorships at the London
Institute and Westminster University. He has been awarded honorary doctorates
by the Universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Central England. His
contributions to social science were recognised in 2003 by his election to the
Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. His contribution to
business development was recognised in 2004 by his appointment as an
ambassador for Investors in People.
Before entering academic life, he had eight years industrial and sales
experience, worked as a librarian in Liverpool, taught in a London
comprehensive school, and was a professional actor with Joan Littlewood's
famous Theatre Workshop Company at Stratford East.
He is the author of fourteen books on motivation, change, communication, and
personal identity, and is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, The
Independent, and The Times. His weekly satirical column on university life has
been appearing in the Times Higher Education Supplement for the last twenty
years. His most recent book (written with his son, Matthew) was called What
Are Children For?. He is an editor of New Humanist, the bi-monthly magazine
dedicated to freethinking.
For the past twenty-five years he has been heard on BBC Radio 4 in such
programmes as Stop the Week, The Radio Programme, News Quiz, Speaking as an
Expert, Afternoon Shift, and Room for Improvement. He can currently be heard
every Wednesday afternoon on R4 presenting Thinking Allowed, a programme
devoted to society and social change.
Laurie has made several major television documentaries on such topics as
crime, drinking behaviour, and the purpose of education. His most recent films
for C4 were a major one-hour film on celebrity (transmitted in December 2003)
and a highly acclaimed one-hour documentary on death and dying (On Pain of
Death) broadcast in July 2005. His next film for C4 will be about the
satisfactions of secularism.
In the last fifteen years he has addressed over five hundred major national
and international companies on change, motivation, teamwork, new technology,
risk, thought leadership, and communication.
He is currently engaged in a 45-venue stand-up comedy tour of British
universities called 'Articulated Laurie'.
