Sheila Allen (sociologist)
Sheila Allen (born Sheila McKenny, 2 November 1930; died 16 January 2009) was an English sociologist and academic. She was Professor of Sociology at the University of Bradford from 1972 to 1999, and served as president of the British Sociological Association from 1975 to 1977.
Career
The daughter of John and Marjorie McKenny,
McKenny married twice, firstly to Tim Williams in 1953; they divorced, and she married Vic Allen in 1968. They subsequently divorced, but with him she had two daughters, Lucy and Sophie. She and Allen kept an open house at times, hosting a diverse range of guests from intellectuals to trade unionists. In later life, she suffered from a variety of health problems, and died on 16 January 2009.[2]
Research
From a personal perspective, McKenny (who went by her married name Allen after 1968) became interested in sociology as a means of understanding and improving the world.[2] The Independent described her as "an uncompromising intellectual, feminist, and socialist, and an impressive role model for generations of students who were taught, mentored, challenged, argued with and supported by her. For those in authority, she was often 'an impossible woman' precisely because she refused to be bullied and intimidated. She understood the importance of power relations and divisions of every sort in society – ethnicity, class, gender, disability."[2] She wrote widely on issues of race, class and gender, established Bradford's Ethnicity and Social Policy Research Centre, and was director of the Youth and Work: Differential Ethnic Experience project there. She was especially interested in the intersections of race and gender and was probably the first academic to write about institutional racism in a British context (in a 1973 article); she was also interested in the difficulties faced by migrant single women who had to deal with British institutions run by and set up for men.[3] In the mid-1970s, she established one of the earliest women's studies masters courses, and also established evening part-time courses at Bradford, to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds attend university.[3] In 1974, she organised (with Diana Leonard) the first British Sociological Association conference on sexual divisions within society.[2]
Selected publications
- New Minorities, Old Conflict: Asian and West Indian Migrants in Britain (Random House, 1971).
- "The Institutionalization of Racism", Race & Class, vol. 15, no. 1 (1973), pp. 99–106.
- (Co-edited with Diana Leonard) Sexual Divisions and Society: Process and Change (Routledge, 1976).
- (Co-authored with Diana Leonard) Dependence and Exploitation in Work and Marriage (Longman, 1976).
- (Co-authored with Stuart Bentley and Joanna Bornat) Work, Race and Immigration (University of Bradford, 1977).
- (Co-edited with Brian Burkett) The Sociology of Economic Life (1991).
References
- ^ Dedication in Sheila Allen, New Minorities, Old Conflicts: Asian and West Indian Migrants in Britain (Random House, 1971).
- ^ a b c d e Helen Roberts and Juliet Webster, "Sheila Allen: Uncompromising sociologist who pioneered the concept of institutional racism in Britain", The Independent, 4 May 2009. Retrieved 17 September 2018.
- ^ a b c Haleh Afshar, "Sheila Allen obituary", The Guardian, 27 January 2009. Retrieved 17 September 2018.
- ^ Anthony Giddens and Gavin MacKenzie (eds.), Social Class and the Division of Labour: Essays in Honour of Ilya Neustadt (Cambridge University Press, 1982), vii.
- ^ For McKenny's prizes upon leaving school in Sleaford, see "Lazy girls warned—Early leavers told 'it's £800 wasted'", Lincolnshire Echo, 16 November 1949, p. 1 (retrieved via the British Newspaper Archive, 18 September 2018).