Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society within UCL’s Faculty of the Arts and Humanities, and a Faculty Associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. Prior to UCL, he was Lecturer in Film and Literature the Department English and Related Literature at the University of York and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was an LSE Fellow in Film Studies within the Department of Sociology. 

Nwonka’s scholarship broadly centres on race and the humanities. His research is focused on the study of Black film, culture and identity, with a particular focus on the modes through which Black identities are shape by representations of Black identity, the political economy of Black cultural politics, Black aesthetics, and the hegemony of neoliberalism within forms of Black popular culture. In addition, he has published extensively on racial inequality in the creative industries and ‘diversity’ policy frameworks that are equally born from broader political discourses on race, racism and cultural difference. Thus, Dr Nwonka’s research is interdisciplinary and spans across Film Studies, literature, Cultural Studies, Black Studies and Sociology.

He is the co-editor of the book Black Film/British Cinema II (2021), the author of the book Black Boys: The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film (2023), which was longlisted for the 2024 Krazna Krausz Moving Image Book Award, the author/co-editor of the book Black Arsenal: Club, Culture and Identity (2024) and co-author of the forthcoming book Race and Racism in the Creative and Cultural Industries (2025).

Nwonka is the Principal Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project The Colour of Diversity: A Longitudinal Analysis of the BFI Diversity Standards Data and Racial Inequality in the UK Film Industry (2021-2024), a major study of race and racism in the UK film sector and the efficacy of cultural diversity policy.

His writing and research have featured regularly in The Guardian, The Observer, New York Times, BBC News, Sight and Sound, and has featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC Front Row, ITV News, CNN International, BBC Africa, BBC Sport and Sky Sports News. In addition, Nwonka has collaborated on research and such as The Barbican Centre, the British Film Institute, Tate Modern/Tate Britain, The Southbank Centre, The Royal academy of Arts, ITV, the Danish Film Institute, The Labour Party, The Council of Europe and Arsenal Football Club.

Beyond UCL, Nwonka was a Visiting Researcher witting the African American and African Diasporic Studies Department at Columbia University, and is a Senior Visiting Fellow within the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.