He is a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the Media and Communications Department, with his particular research interests being culture, technology and reggae sound systems.
[4][5][6] His first feature film as a writer and director was Babymother (1998), produced by Parminder Vir,[7] about which Stuart Hall wrote in Sight and Sound: "This film is wired directly into the motor of assertive energy which is powering so-called multicultural Britain, to whose rhythm London is increasingly swinging.
[14][15] His books include Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing (2011), described by Stuart Hall as "an exciting text that is thoroughly grounded in Jamaican 'sonic' cultures, technically sophisticated, full of original insights, and theoretically bold and adventurous",[16] and about which Dennis Howard said in Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture: "Julian Henriques offers a fresh and illuminating exploration of Jamaican auditory culture through the reggae sound system, making a significant contribution to an aspect of Caribbean and Jamaican culture that is in dire need of interrogation and epistemological grounding.
[2][20] In 1985, Henriques married Parminder Vir, business executive, filmmaker and television producer, and they have two daughters: Mala and Anuradha.
[22] Born in Jamaica in 1916 (with his notable siblings including Pauline Henriques and Cyril Henriques), Fernando at the age of three came to London, eventually attending Oxford University, where he became President of the Oxford Union in 1944,[23] receiving his DPhil in 1948, and being appointed lecturer in Social Anthropology at Leeds in 1948, going on to be Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies – possibly the first Black academic in the UK to hold such a role.