Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born cultural theorist, political activist and sociologist who helped establish the field of British cultural studies with colleagues Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University. He co-authored one of the first books to explore the serious study of entertainment film with Paddy Whannel, The Popular Arts, in 1964. His essay, "Encoding/Decoding" was very influential among educators and scholars in media studies.