Professor Marian Barnes delivered her inaugural lecture entitled 'Deliberating with care: ethics and knowledge in the making of social policies' on Thursday 24 April 2008.
In this inaugural lecture Marian drew on her experience of the ways in which citizens and users contribute to the process of decision making in social and public policy. It considered such processes as sites in which different knowledges may lead to transformation or conflict, and where ethical principles may - or may not - enable social justice to be achieved.
Before coming to Brighton Marian worked at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham, where she was Professor of Social Research. Her first degree, in sociology, was from the University of Sussex, so she is returning to a familiar part of the country. Her Masters and Doctorate - in Information Studies and Librarianship - are from Sheffield. After practising briefly as a librarian Marian took up a research post working in local government social services. This led to her first academic post as Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at Birmingham University.
