Academy Fellow

Professor Gavin Kitching was formerly Head of School in the School of Politics and International Relations at UNSW. His principal areas of interest are in the Politics of Development and Globalization and the implications of the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein for social and political science. He has published major works on rural development in Africa, development theory, and on thephilosophy of Marx and Wittgenstein. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Agrarian Change and of Mind and Society, and has acted as a consultant for the World Bank, FAO and Ford Foundation.

Since his retirement in 2012, Professor Kitching has been engaged in writing a social history of his region of origin (the North-East of England) seen through the lens of football (soccer), an icon of that region's culture. He has published several articles from that research, and has now (2018) signed a publishing contract with Oxford University Press for the book, which is to be completed by 2020.

He has also continued his interest in the implications of Wittgenstein's later philosophy for social and political theory and in the politics and economics of globalisation, and is currently (2018) writing a book on the latter topic.

Fulbright Fellow, State University of New York, 1987

Brockington Visitor, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, 2003

Visiting Professor, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, 2004

Visiting Professor, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Research, University of Newcastle, UK, 2009

Visiting Research Fellow, International Centre for Sports History, De Montfort University, Leicester, 2011-2016

Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, 2017-18

Ludwig Wittgenstein Professor, University of Veracruz, Xalapa, Mexico, March 2019

Nalgo Prize in Politics, University of Sheffield, 1968

Herskovitz Award, US African Studies Association, 1980

Nominated for New Statesmen 'Books of the Year' award, 1983

Soros Foundation Award for Research on Post-Soviet Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1995

• Gavin Kitching (2008) The Trouble with Theory: The Educational Costs of Post-Modernism, Allen&Unwin
• Gavin Kitching (2003) Wittgenstein and Society: Essays in Conceptual Puzzlement. : Ashgate.
• (2002) Marx and Wittgenstein: Knowledge, Morality and Politics. London: Routledge.
• Gavin Kitching (2001) Globalization and Social Justice: Escaping a Nationalist Perspective. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
• Gavin Kitching (2000) Why I gave up African Studies, Australasian African Studies Review.
• Gavin Kitching (2000) The concept of 'Sebestoimost' in Russian Farm Accounting: A very Unmagical Mystery Tour, Journal of Agrarian Change (1: No. 9).
• Gavin Kitching (1998) The Revenge of the Peasant? The Collapse of Large Scale Russian Agriculture and the role of the Peasant 'Private Plot' in that Collapse, Journal of Peasant Studies (25: No. 1: 43-81).
• Gavin Kitching,(2011) '''From Time Immemorial': The Alnwick Shrovetide Football Match and the Continuous Remaking of Tradition 1828-1890”, The International Journal of the History of Sport,
• Gavin Kitching, (2011) “Old’ Football and the ‘New’ Codes: Some Thoughts on the ‘Origins of Football’ Debate and Suggestions for Further Research”The International Journal of the History of Sport,
• Gavin Kitching,(2011) “What’s in A Name?: Playing ‘Football’ in the Mid-Victorian North-East” Ethnologie Francaise,
• Gavin Kitching,(2015) “The Origins of Football: History, Ideology and the Making of ‘The People’s Game’”, History Workshop Journal,