Dr Solomon Lennox is project lead on the Institute of Social and Economic Research funded project ‘Understanding the Absence of Active Clubs in Newfoundland and Labrador’
He was Head of Department - Arts, at ϲ (2019-2024). Head of Subject for Drama (2017-2019). Lennox joined Northumbria in 2014 from the University of East London.
Lennox has an established history of engagement with professional scholarly organisations. He is the Vice-Chair and Secretary of the Treasurer of the Archivist (2015-2021). He is a previous Co-Convenor for the Bodies and Performance Working Group for the
Lennox’s research examines how the relationship between the stories people tell about their lives (narrative identity) and the repeated physical practices they engage with (e.g. boxing training), support their identity performance. His work demonstrates the pervasive violence of Whiteness in the formation of narrative identity in combat sports and political arenas.
In Boxing and Performance (2020), Lennox established the first typology of boxing’s shared narrative resources, demonstrating how grand narratives act as racist specters through which identities are performed. In Boxing, Narrative and Culture (2023), he presented the first body of work through which Global South scholars explored the impact of the typology of boxing’s shared narrative resources on how global boxing identities are performed.
Lennox’s outputs have interrogated the potential violence of appropriating physical gestures as a form of activism (‘Taking a Knee’ 2022); explored how the violence of Whiteness can be countered or reinforced through digital avatars (‘Social Avatars’ 2023); demonstrated the impact of the violence of Whiteness when projected onto readings of Black embodied experience (‘Lady Tyger’ 2024); examined how White violence is affected, performed, and witnessed through fashion (‘Teddy Boys and the Performativity of Dangerous Fashion’ in progress with International Journal of Fashion Studies).
Lennox provides expert commentary for news outlets (such as, New Republic and Front Office Sports) on the political violence of Whiteness in combat sports.
He is currently working on his second, sole-authored, monograph, Spectating White Violence. The project establishes a theory of spectatorship as it pertains to the performance of White violence, as manifest in North America and the UK from the late 1800s onwards (expected publication 2026). Additionally, Lennox is also be commissioned to guest edit a special edition of the journal Arts, titled “Shared Narratives in Performance: The Interplay of Narrative, Gestures, and Identity Formation”.
Lennox currently supervises three PhD projects:
Lennox is project lead on the Institute of Social and Economic Research funded project ‘Understanding the Absence of Active Clubs in Newfoundland and Labrador’
Academic Leadership
Lennox was Head of Department, Arts at ϲ (2019-2024) and Head of Subject, Drama at ϲ (2017-2019). Lennox is currently Vice-Chair and Secretary for the Theatre & Performance Research Association (2022 – present), and has previously held elected roles as Board Member and Archivist for Performance Studies international (2015-2021), and Treasurer for the Standing Conference of Drama Departments (now DramaHE) (2014-2019).
Lennox is interested in supervising PhD projects in performance studies across a range of topics not limited to
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