Professor Robert Benewick

Bob Benewick was born 23 August 1932 in Rochester, New York State. After a first degree from Cornell University in 1956 and a masters from Ohio State University, he took up a research studentship at the University of Manchester in 1958 to study for his PhD on ‘London working class politics and the formation of the London Labour Party: 1885-1914’. After a year-long research fellowship at the University of the West Indies, Bob secured a Politics lectureship at Hull University in 1963. While at Hull, Bob published Political Violence and Public Order and edited, with Bhikhu Parekh, Knowledge and Belief in Politics.

In 1972, Bob secured a Readership at the University of Sussex and was made a Professor in 1993. Bob remained at Sussex until his retirement in 1997, only taking leave to assume a visiting professorship at Smith College and at the Chinese People’s University in Beijing.

Sussex was Bob’s kind of place. He was at one with the founders’ wish to ‘redraw the map of learning’ through a focus on interdisciplinarity, with school-based ‘contextual’ courses given parity with discipline-based majors. For sure, Bob was very well-prepared to teach core courses within the Politics major on the USA, China, and Britain. But he also relished the opportunity to teach contextual courses on Civil Liberties, Modern Political Ideologies, Social Theory and American Society, and Key Concepts in Political and Social Thought to his students no matter what their major. 

At Sussex, the emphasis on Schools of Studies - with a more modest role for 'Subject Groups' - made the university a uniquely challenging place to organise. The more so as external reviews and funding tended to increasingly focus on disciplines and departments. Bob took up this organisational challenge. He was, uniquely, Dean of the School of Social Sciences; Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Social Studies; and Dean of the School of English and American Studies. He also did stints chairing the Politics Subject Group. Bob never pushed to secure these positions, but he enjoyed the bottom-up support of his academic colleagues at the same time as he was trusted by Vice Chancellors. Bob assumed a leading role because he listened, nudged, and was skilled in being able to secure sensible compromises and sometimes build a consensus around the need for change. He played an important role in keeping the Sussex show on the road in difficult times.  

Deanships take up time and energy, but Bob did not ignore his research. He co-authored, with Trevor Smith, Direct Action and Democratic Politics; and co-edited, with Philip Green, The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth Century Political Thinkers. That said, Bob will be best remembered for his work on China. It started with a short visit in 1975 as the Cultural Revolution was fading, and continued for the next forty years. Bob undertook collaborative research projects on centre-local relations; village governance; and urban community construction. He co-edited with Paul Wingrove, Reforming the revolution: China in Transition, and China in the 1990s; and with Marc Blecher, and Sarah Cook, Asian Politics in Development. He co-authored, with Stephanie Donald, three editions of The State of China Atlas, as well as The Pocket China Atlas. 

In retirement, Bob continued to publish on China and he worked with the Society for Anglo Chinese Understanding (SACU) well into the 2000s. Colleagues have noted how Bob ‘brought vision and insight to SACU’s mission’ and that he did much to help the organisation stay relevant as China changed, whilst never forgetting the importance of being a sharp critical friend. Bob’s commitment to progressive scholarship also informed the work he did with Myriad Editions, the publisher founded by his first wife, Anne, which he continued to support after her death in 1998.

Bob died 29 July 2023. He is survived by niece, Kate, and by his stepdaughters, Louisa and Emma. His funeral will take place at 12.00 noon on Saturday 9 September at Woodvale Crematorium, Brighton BN2 3QB.

Author: John Dearlove. Former Professor of Politics; Dean of the School of Social Sciences; and Pro-Vice-Chancellor.