Lincoln Allison


Lincoln Allison is an English academic and essayist.

Life and career

Allison grew up in Colne, Lancashire, and was educated at Royal Grammar School, Lancaster, and at University and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford. He was a research scholar at Stanford University before taking up a position at the University of Warwick, where he taught from 1969 to 2004. Retired from full-time teaching, he is now Emeritus Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick and visiting professor in the politics of sport at the University of Brighton.
Commenting in 2023 on new rules which aim to restrict relationships between university staff and students, Allison said that as a young lecturer he "played sport with students, got drunk with students and made love with students. All of this seemed entirely normal on the campus of a new university in the late 1960s and early 1970s."
He is most noted for his work on the politics of sport, for which he was awarded a D.Litt in 2003, but he has also produced books on a number of other topics and been a prolific writer for magazines and newspapers since the 1970s.
He married Ann McDonnell in 1975; they have three sons.

Books