Jason Arday, the prominent British sociologist who resigned from the University of Cambridge days earlier amid allegations of plagiarism and questions about parts of his academic and personal record, has been found dead at his home in south London.

He was 41.

Police were called to an address in Battersea on Friday afternoon after Arday was found unresponsive.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Metropolitan Police said the death is being treated as unexpected but not suspicious, meaning investigators have found no indication at this stage that another person was criminally responsible.

The case will be referred to the coroner, who is responsible for determining the medical cause and circumstances of unexpected deaths.

Arday's death came after an intense period of public scrutiny that culminated in his resignation from Cambridge.

The university had opened a formal investigation after allegations emerged concerning plagiarism in his doctoral thesis and other academic work, alongside questions about some claims he had made about his education, childhood, sporting achievements and charitable fundraising.

The allegations included an analysis identifying more than 100 passages in Arday's 2015 doctoral thesis that were said to be identical or closely similar to material in an earlier doctoral thesis by another researcher.

Other questions were subsequently raised about published academic work.

Arday denied deliberately plagiarising material, while acknowledging errors in his doctoral work and arguing that some criticism of him had been misleading or unfair.

His departure also triggered scrutiny inside Cambridge over how he had been appointed and how the university responded once concerns about his work were raised.

Nearly 100 senior academics called for a wider independent examination of the affair, including the appointment process, the handling of misconduct allegations and the university's response to the increasingly hostile public controversy surrounding him.

Arday had become one of Britain's most visible academics after joining Cambridge in March 2023 as professor of sociology of education.

At 37, he was celebrated as the youngest Black person appointed to a professorship at the university.

His research focused on race, inequality, higher education, mental health and neurodiversity.

His rise attracted exceptional attention because of the personal history presented by Arday and Cambridge when his appointment was announced.

He said he had been diagnosed with autism and developmental delay as a young child, had been unable to speak until around the age of 11 and could not read or write until he was 18. His progression from those difficulties to earning a doctorate and becoming a Cambridge professor was widely presented as an extraordinary story of academic achievement.

Some elements of that account were later challenged.

Former school acquaintances gave conflicting recollections about claims that he had been non-verbal as a child, while questions were also raised about accounts of endurance running, fundraising and other achievements.

Other people who knew him during his childhood supported aspects of his description of his early difficulties.

Those disputes remained unresolved when he died.

The controversy became particularly charged because Arday's career and scholarship were closely associated with race and inequality.

Critics argued that questions about academic integrity and the accuracy of biographical claims required rigorous investigation regardless of his background.

Supporters, colleagues and members of his family argued that legitimate scrutiny had become mixed with racist abuse, personal attacks and an increasingly aggressive campaign against him.

His family said after his death that he had faced sustained abuse and harassment and described the pressure surrounding the controversy as severe.

Cambridge expressed its condolences following confirmation of his death.

Arday had previously taught at the University of Glasgow and held academic positions at Durham University and other institutions.

His death does not resolve the underlying academic questions.

Cambridge's investigation into Arday himself was overtaken by his resignation and death, while the wider debate over the university's appointment procedures, its handling of the allegations and the standards applied to senior academic appointments remains significant for the institution.

Arday's death also changes the context in which those questions will now be examined.

The allegations concerning his scholarship remain matters of academic record and evidence, while claims about harassment and the treatment he experienced before his death have prompted a separate debate over how institutions, academics and the media handle serious misconduct allegations when scrutiny becomes intensely personal.

For the immediate investigation into his death, however, the official position is narrower.

Police have said there are no suspicious circumstances.

The coroner will now determine the cause of death, while Cambridge and the wider academic community are left confronting both the unresolved controversy surrounding Arday's work and the death of a scholar whose rapid rise and equally rapid fall from public acclaim became one of the most contentious episodes in recent British academia.