Social Studies at Sheffield : Miss Ellinor I. Black

Abstract

THE University of Sheffield has recently decided to create a new School of Social Studies, which will provide a postgraduate course leading to a diploma in social studies, and other courses leading to lower qualifications. The School will be governed by a board, on which the Science as well as the Arts Faculty will be represented. As a first step to establishing the school, the University has appointed Miss Ellinor I. Black as its director. Miss Black has been associated with the Social Science Department of the University of Liverpool, which she joined in 1924 at the most critical period of its development. Since 1941 she has been a senior lecturer, and for five years during the period of the War she acted as head of the Department. In addition to the reputation she has established in Great Britain, she has also created for herself a somewhat unique position in the international field ; she has since 1936 been closely connected with the Social Welfare Committee of the League of Nations, and the International Committee of Schools of Social Work. In recent months she has renewed her personal contacts with schools of social work in the United States and in Germany. Miss Black is particularly interested in the welfare of the aged. She was a member of the Old Age Survey Committee of the Nuffield Foundation, and she has carried out detailed investigations of the problem in the Merseyside area. Miss Black has made a very deep impression on the education of the professional social worker in Great Britain ; as a teacher she has been able to win both the intellectual and the more personal loyalties of her students, as so many that have passed through the Liverpool School can testify. Sheffield will gain in her one who will devote herself wholeheartedly to the creation of the new institution, which will thus possess a very special human quality.