Berry Mayall

Berry was a WILPF member and supporter for many years. She took her first degree in English Literature at Cambridge. She later studied for an MSc in social work at the LSE and became a researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit under Jack Tizard in 1973.

Berry’s speciality was childhood studies in which she became a professor in 1981. Her mode of work – either through research or by personal interview – was to listen to the experiences of children as people. As she wrote, “It is through working towards better understanding of the social condition of childhood that we can provide a firm basis for working towards implementation of their rights.”

As a WILPF member, Berry considered feminism relevant to her work and questioned why the parallels between women’s studies and childhood studies had not been explored more fully in the childhood studies literature.

Berry’s work was ground-breaking. In 1990, with Ann Oakley, she set up the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education. Together, they later established an MA in Children’s Studies. She worked collaboratively and was involved in over 50 publications.

Berry was part of an international network of academics involved in her discipline and was invited to speak at childhood studies conferences across Europe. In her most recent work of 2018, Visionary Women and Visible Children, England 1900–1920, she looked at children and the women’s movement that gave birth to WILPF.

Berry’s daughter Hannah asked her many friends celebrating her life to donate to WILPF UK in her name. We have lost a fine mind, a child advocate and a good friend.