Former University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday has been found dead at an address in south London, nine days after he resigned amid allegations of plagiarism and exaggerated personal claims.
Mr Arday, 41, was found unresponsive at a property in Battersea on Friday afternoon and pronounced dead at the scene. The Metropolitan Police said officers were called by the London Ambulance Service at 3.12pm. The death was first reported by The Telegraph.
In a statement, the force said: "Sadly, a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next-of-kin have been informed and are being supported by officers."
"At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious."
The case is being handled by officers from the Met's Central South Command Unit, and a file will be prepared for the coroner. No inquest has yet opened and no cause of death has been established.
Mr Arday resigned as professor of sociology of education on 5 August, hours after Cambridge announced an investigation into his academic qualifications and honorary appointments. In an open letter published by the Good Law Project, he said the "only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away", citing an unrelenting level of public scrutiny. He also gave up his fellowship at Jesus College, which opened its own process and asked that he and his family "are treated with compassion and respect".
Appointed in 2023 at the age of 37, he was the youngest black professor in the university's history, and had become one of the most visible figures in British higher education, writing extensively on race and access to academia. He has said he is autistic and dyslexic, and that he did not speak until he was 11 or read and write until he was 18.
The allegations against him began with a comparison of his 2015 doctoral thesis, awarded by Liverpool John Moores University, against an earlier dissertation. Reported estimates of the overlap have varied considerably, from dozens of near-verbatim passages to figures of more than 100 or around 180 sentences, depending on the analysis cited. David Sanders, a scientific integrity specialist at Purdue University who reviewed a dossier compiled by Times Higher Education, told Retraction Watch: "There is no question that there is extensive plagiarism."
Liverpool John Moores said an earlier investigation had found no academic misconduct and that the doctorate remained valid, with the alleged plagiarism attributed to honest and reasonable error. Two of his journal articles, from 2018 and 2020, were later corrected over sourcing.
Separate scrutiny fell on claims made outside his published work, including a charity fundraising total variously given as £5 million or £5.5 million, an account of running 600 miles in six days, and a claim to have appeared in the documentary series Seven Up!, which was broadcast two decades before his birth. He told The Times the fundraising had been carried out as part of a syndicate of around 100 people, and told The Guardian it involved many collectives over two decades.
He denied acting dishonestly while accepting he had made mistakes. "I am accountable for the mistakes I've made," he told The Times. "We're talking about academia here. I didn't murder somebody. I think the cruelty that I've experienced and the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist is totally unacceptable."
The case had already drawn political attention. In February, the Met dropped a four-month harassment inquiry into a journalist who had investigated Mr Arday's work. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley conceded this week that the complaint should have been screened out earlier, telling LBC: "We dropped the ball on that one."
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