Ann Oakley on Barbara Wootton
Ann Oakley met Barbara Wootton in the 1950s, through her father, Richard Titmuss. Titmuss and Wootton were colleagues at the University of London. Ann’s childhood memories of Wootton later turned into a great admiration for Wootton’s work – she read Wootton’s work on economics when she was a student at Oxford in the 1960s, and used Wootton’s reviews of social science research and writings on evidence-based policy when she launched a programme of work on public policy research at the University of London in the 1990s. The Nuffield Foundation agreed to help fund a major biographical project on Wootton, fulfilling Ann’s childhood dream of understanding more about this remarkable woman.
 
The biography, A Critical Woman, was published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Academic.
 
Some shorter pieces Ann has written about Wootton are listed below.
Published by UC Online.
Written for IOE Life.
The social science of biographical life-writing: some methodological and ethical issues
The International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2010.
The New Humanist Magazine, May/June 2011.
Girton College Annual Review 2011
 
Some of Ann Oakley’s talks about Barbara Wootton’s work can also be read online:
Women, social science and criminal justice:one woman's (forgotten) journey. Ann Oakley's talk at Beyond the first 100 years: the past and future of women in society, Nuffield College, Oxford, 25 March 2011. Transcript and Slides.
The Wootton Effect, British Library, 16 November 2011