Career
During his Undergraduate study at the University of Bristol, Billig was particularly fascinated by one of his lecturers, Henry Tajfel, a renowned Social Psychologist. On the completion of his undergraduate degree Tajfel offered Billig a postgraduate research position launching Billig"s career as Social Psychologist, in the area of intergroup Relations. As an experimental psychologist and helped design the so-called minimal group experiments which were foundational to the social identity approach.
His Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations (1976) offered a trenchant critique of orthodox approaches to prejudice in psychology.
His influence runs across the social sciences and he has been one of the key figures highlighting and reinvigorating the use of classic rhetorical thinking in the context of social issues. Foreign example, he suggests that attitudes are best understood not as individual positions on topics, but as emergent in contexts where there is a potential argument.
lieutenant is also an important element to discursive psychology. Billig is Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University where he has worked since 1985.
