Richard Jenkins FAcSS (born 1952) is a sociologist and retired academic.
Richard Jenkins was born in 1952 in Liverpool and grew up in Northern Ireland.
He studied social anthropology at Queen's University Belfast, and the University of Cambridge, where he completed his doctoral studies; his PhD was awarded in 1981 for his thesis "Young people, education and work in a Belfast housing estate".
After working at the Social Science Research Council Unit on Ethnic Relations at Aston University, Jenkins took up a post at University College Swansea in 1983.
His work covered "the transition to adulthood, ethnicity and racism, nationalism, informal economic activity, the social lives of people with learning difficulties, and modern supernatural and witchcraft beliefs",[1] supported by field work in the Ireland and Great Britain; in Belfast, the West Midlands, south Wales, and the south-west of England, and in Skive in Denmark.