Sharon Witherspoon

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Sharon Fae Witherspoon, Lady Jowell MBE FAcSS (born 1956) [1] is a British statistician, serving as Head of Policy of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Campaign for Social Science, and as a member of the Review Body on Senior Salaries of the British government. [2] She is also Vice President for Education and Statistical Literacy of the Royal Statistical Society. [3]

Contents

Education and career

Witherspoon went to high school in the United States, and earned a degree in sociology at an American university, before her postgraduate study of historical sociology at the London School of Economics. [4] [5] She worked for a market research firm before becoming a researcher at Social and Community Planning Research, which later became the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). [4]

At NatCen, Witherspoon was one of the initial researchers of the British Social Attitudes Survey. [6] She worked for the Nuffield Foundation from 1996 to 2015, and was director of the foundation from 2012 until 2015. She moved to the Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. [2] [7] [8]

Recognition

Witherspoon is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. [9] She became a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2008. In 2011 she was awarded the President's Medal of the British Academy. [7] In 2015, University College London gave her an honorary doctorate. [9]

Personal life

Witherspoon married one of her collaborators on the British Social Attitudes Survey, [6] statistician Sir Roger Jowell (as his third wife) in 1996; he died in 2011. [10]

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References

  1. Birth year from VIAF authority control record and National Library of Australia catalog data, retrieved 2019-08-21
  2. 1 2 Sharon Witherspoon MBE, UK Government, retrieved 2019-08-21
  3. President and Vice Presidents, The Royal Statistical Society, retrieved 2019-08-21
  4. 1 2 Stand Out and Be Counted: A guide to maximising your prospects for students studying Social Science and Humanities subjects (PDF), The British Academy, p. 12
  5. Using Quantitative Skills in the Third Sector, The British Academy, 1 May 2013
  6. 1 2 Dean, Hartley; Taylor-Gooby, Peter (2014), Dependency Culture, Routledge, p. x, ISBN   9781317866961
  7. 1 2 Sharon Witherspoon, Nuffield Foundation , retrieved 2019-08-21
  8. Mason, Tania (23 June 2015), "Long-serving Nuffield Foundation director departs over strategic differences", Civil Society
  9. 1 2 Sharon Witherspoon MBE FAcSS, Head of Policy, Academy of Social Sciences , retrieved 2019-08-21
  10. Walker, David (8 January 2012), "Sir Roger Jowell obituary", The Guardian