In this spotlight we hear more about Professor John Goodwin’s research to outline the work and interests of Ilya Neustadt (first professor of Sociology at Leicester).
Since joining Sociology at Leicester in 1991, I have been fascinated by the development of sociology at the University. From its early days with a single lecturer in the Department of Economics through the 1960s and 1970s, when Leicester served as a key training ground for many who became significant figures in the discipline, there are numerous interesting stories. One largely untold story is the close connections between Leicester Sociology and the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana in Accra. Both Leicester and Ghana were originally part of the University of London’s accreditation system, which offers context for these close ties. However, these connections extend beyond this; particularly interesting is the time Ilya Neustadt (the first Professor of Sociology at Leicester) and Norbert Elias spent in Ghana. Elias’s time is somewhat detailed in Norbert Elias’s African Processes of Civilisation (2022). Nevertheless, Neustadt’s earlier visit to Ghana remains overlooked, and it is this story that forms the basis of my recently awarded LIAS Archives and Special Collections Fellowship.
In 2008, I was fortunate enough to visit the University of Ghana. During my visit, I had access to the archive materials related to Neustadt and Elias. I also had the opportunity to explore the Sociology Department and meet Ghanaian sociologists. It was amazing to walk in their footsteps and see the views they had also seen some fifty years earlier.
My Dear Ilya, I am writing this in the office that you know so well. I like the view from my windows, like almost everything else here. To my mind, this is one of the most beautiful universities in the world, aesthetically speaking…. (Elias to Neustadt, personal correspondence 11th October 1962)
The University of Ghana’s archival materials revealed that while in Ghana, Neustadt conducted original empirical research on the country’s social and economic development and examined African music, literature, and art. This challenges the established narrative of Neustadt being primarily an ‘academic administrator’ rather than a writer or empirical sociological researcher. This revised perspective on Neustadt was reinforced after consulting the University of Leicester archive document ULA/D57, which contains Neustadt Ghanaian newspaper cuttings, pamphlets, and publications, alongside materials and data related to the Social and Economic Survey of Tema.
Combining these resources with my own archival materials related to Neustadt in Ghana has, somewhat serendipitously, provided an empirical foundation upon which to re-examine the Leicester-Ghana links. Through a sociological lens, my aim is to draw on demography, history, the history of social science, African studies, literary and music studies, archival methods, as well as research practices involving ‘non-standard’ data and ephemera to outline the story of Neustadt’s work and interests in African culture and society. The story will be presented through a workshop, an exhibition, and an article entitled ‘Neustadt’s African Interlude: A Leicester Sociologist in 1950s Ghana’.
The LIAS Archives and Special Collections Fellowship has given me the opportunity to think about and reflect on the archive materials already compiled, as well as to consider the significance of the materials held in document ULA/D57 in Leicester’s Archives and Special Collections. Without the space this Fellowship has provided, I am sure the story of Neustadt in Ghana would remain untold and lost in the archives.
If you’d like to learn more about the Leicester sociology story or Ilya Neustadt, please follow the links to the following web pages and articles.
- Who Was Ilya Neustadt ? – https://le.ac.uk/cssp/events/neustadt
- Obituary: Professor Ilya Neustadt – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-professor-ilya-neustadt-1473958.html
- Goodwin, J. and Hughes, J. (2011), Ilya Neustadt, Norbert Elias, and the Leicester Department: personal correspondence and the history of sociology in Britain. The British Journal of Sociology, 62: 677-695. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2011.01386.x
- Kaspersen, L. B., & Mulvad, A. M. (2017). Towards a Figurational History of Leicester Sociology, 1954–1982. Sociology, 51(6), 1186–1204. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26944622