Billy Holzberg is a sociologist and social theorist based at King’s College London, where he is Lecturer in Social Justice. His research focuses on the emotional dynamics of social and political life, with particular attention to nationalism, bordering and the resurgence of the far right. Drawing on queer, feminist and postcolonial affect theory, he analyses how emotions such as fear, resentment, empathy and guilt operate as social forces that shape attachments to the nation and reproduce, but also challenge, distinctions between those deemed deserving of care and those constructed as threats.

Billy holds a PhD from the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and was previously a Fellow in Gender and Culture in the LSE Department of Sociology. He sits on the editorial board of The Sociological Review and has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York and the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.

Research

Situated at the intersection of political and cultural sociology, Billy Holzberg's research develops an analytical framework for examining the affective grammars and emotional narratives through which political communities imagine themselves and their boundaries. His work examines how these grammars take hold across migration discourse, gender and sexual politics, and contemporary media culture. It traces how affect and emotion reproduce and contest inequalities of race, gender and sexuality, and shape the resurgence of authoritarian nationalism.

This research culminated in his monograph Affective Bordering: Race, Deservingness and the Emotional Politics of Migration Control (Manchester University Press, 2024), which demonstrates how borders are enacted not only through law and policy but through emotional politics that create racialised hierarchies of deservingness. The book takes the so-called ‘refugee crisis' and its aftermath in Germany as its case study and was awarded the 2025 Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for the best first and sole-authored book in sociology by the British Sociological Association.

Across his wider publications, his work examines the emotional politics of far-right mobilisation, anti-gender movements and the rise of conspiracy theories. It reveals how nationalist belonging, racialised exclusion and gendered anxieties are not only articulated politically but felt and lived through shared affective repertoires. His research is interdisciplinary and international in scope and has been supported by the British Academy, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German National Academic Foundation and the Brazilian Ministry of Education. He regularly gives public talks and collaborates with civil society organisations, cultural institutions and artistic initiatives exploring alternative affective politics.

Teaching

Billy is Deputy Programme Lead for the BA in Social Sciences. He currently convenes modules on:

• The Everyday Politics of Gender and Sexuality
• Media, Culture and Society
• Civil and Political Rights
• Migration, Borders, and the Politics of Belonging

PhD Supervision

Billy welcomes PhD proposals in the following areas:

• Affect and emotions in politics and society
• Borders, migration and nationalism
• Far-right resurgence and anti-gender movements
• Sex, sexuality and sexual politics
• Queer and feminist theory
• Media discourse and conspiracy narratives