Stephen Bourne is a British writer, film and social historian specialising in black culture. As noted by the BBC among others, Bourne "has discovered many stories that have remained untold for years".
He was born in Camberwell, south-east London, and raised in Peckham. He attended Oliver Goldsmith Primary School from 1962 to 1969, St. Michael and All Angels Secondary Modern School from 1969 to 1974 and the Sixth Form of Archbishop Michael Ramsey School from 1974 to 1977. He graduated from the London College of Printing with a bachelor's degree in film and television in 1988, and in 2006 received a Master of Philosophy degree at De Montfort University on the subject of the representation of gay men in British Television Drama 1936–79.
After graduating in 1988, he was a research officer at the British Film Institute on a ground-breaking project that documented the history of black people in British television. The result was a two-part television documentary called Black and White in Colour (BBC 1992), directed by Isaac Julien, that is considered groundbreaking. In 1991 Bourne was a founder member of the Black and Asian Studies Association. In 1999 he undertook pioneering work with Southwark Council and the Metropolitan Police as a voluntary independent adviser to the police. In 2008 he researched Keep Smiling Through – Black Londoners on the Home Front 1939–1945, an exhibition for the Cuming Museum in the London Borough of Southwark and that same year he worked as a historical consultant on the Imperial War Museum's War to Windrush exhibition.