In Conversation with Professor Ann Oakley

This video features Professor Ann Oakley of University College London in conversation with Dr Kahryn Hughes of the University of Leeds and Professor Anna Tarrant of the University of Lincoln.

The conversation was recorded for the Timescapes 10 Festival, which took place on 5-16 September 2022 and was organised by the Timescapes Archive at the University of Leeds. The themes of the conversation were gender, family and legacy.

The conversation was filmed at University College London on 15 June 2022.

Ann Oakley is a writer and a sociologist. She has written both novels and many non-fiction books. Most of her life has been spent working in university research. She is best known for her work on sex and gender, housework, childbirth and social science. Her more recent interests have focused on evidence-based public policy and methodologies of research and evaluation, on the sociology of the body and on biography and autobiography as forms of life-writing.

She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the UCL Socal Research Institute, and until January 2005 was Director of the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) at the Institute of Education, where she also headed the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre). She holds an honorary appointment as a Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. In 2011 the British Sociological Association gave her one of their first Lifetime achievement Awards for her extraordinary contribution to the history of the development of sociology in Britain. She now works on research part-time, and spends the rest of it writing, swimming and spending time with her family and friends.