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Lois Joyce Bryson (5 October 1937 to 7 January 2024) was a prominent Australian sociologist and feminist.

Born in a small town in Victoria Australia, she matriculated at Mac. Robertson Girls High School and graduated from Melbourne University in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Social Studies. While working as a junior staff member at Melbourne University she was the innocent victim of the hysteria generated by a ‘spoiling operation’ run by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation against supposedly subversive academics, so that her contract was not renewed.^[2] She then worked as a psychiatric social worker, a schoolteacher, and educational psychologist before joining the young Department of Sociology at Monash University in 1965. There she completed a PhD on social change in an urban Australian community.

Throughout her career Lois Bryson played an important part in the evolution of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ – now The Australian Sociological Association).^[3] She and others have noted that the 1960s saw a push for more democratic structures in academic departments and associations along with a more socially critical sociology.^[2][4] At the 1972 SAANZ AGM a resolution was passed that the editor of the association’s journal should be elected, and she became the first woman to edit the journal. In 1975-6 she was elected president of the association and continued to serve it for two decades as an executive member, member of the journal’s editorial board and on the judging panel of the Jean Martin award. She was a founding member of the SAANZ Women’s Section (1976)^[5] and an influential presence for the years in which the section was active. In 1997 she was the inaugural recipient of the association’s award for distinguished services to Australian sociology.

After reaching the position of Senior Lecturer at Monash, she moved to the School of Sociology at the University of New South Wales as Senior Lecturer, becoming an Associate Professor in 1980, and serving as head of school 1981-3. From 1983 to 1986 she took a secondment to the Victorian Public Service first as Assistant Director of the department of Community Welfare Services, eventually (1985-6) as the Director of the Social Justice Strategy Unit in the department of Premier and Cabinet. She returned to UNSW in 1986, and in 1990 became Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, serving as the foundation Dean of the Faculty of Social Science (1991-3) and Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (1994-97). At Newcastle she co-founded the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health – a project commencing in 1996 and resulting in more than 600 published papers to 2020, with 58,000 participants and 650 collaborating groups around the world using its data. ^[6] She was a member of the Australian Research Council’s Research Training and Careers committee (1993-95).

On retirement in 1997 she was appointed Emeritus Professor at Newcastle and Adjunct Professor of the School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT, Melbourne. In 1998 she was elected a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Her contributions outside academe continued at a national level when she provided a research report to the senate inquiry into sexual harassment in the Australian Defence force,^[7] and was a member of the Advisory Committee on Discrimination for the same force (1994-6). In 2001 she was awarded a Centenary medal for services to the Centenary of Federation celebrations in New South Wales.^[8]

Her focal academic interests were researching and teaching about social change – notably in the lives of women, post war suburban development and social welfare policy. These interests informed her most influential work regarding the conditions for community, for women’s liberation both in the home and in workplaces and for the development of just social policies.

An Australian Newtown, co-written with Faith Thompson, her first book and the outcome of her doctoral research on the suburb of Doveton in Melbourne. signalled her interest in social change and in community. That interest continued, and she revisited Doveton in Social Change, Suburban Lives: An Australian Newtown 1960s-1990s written with Ian Winter.^[9]

Her 1981 paper co-authored with Martin Mowbray critiquing community as a ‘spray on’ solution was reviewed two decades later as a ‘classic text’ in community development.^[10]

Her focus on policy moved discussion beyond the traditional emphasis on poverty to include inequalities of gender and race. Welfare and the State who Benefits ^[11] was updated in 2014.^[12]

Much of her research focussed on women’s lives as they are affected by social policy,^[13][14] housework,^[15][16] health, ^[17][18] and sport ^[19][20].

In 2001 she was one of the speakers in the ABC’s Barton lecture series that celebrated a century of federation in Australia discussing ‘The New differences between women’.^[21] An obituary described her as both an academic and ‘an agent for change’.^[22]

Entries describing her work have been published in the Australian Women's Register, the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and Biographies of Prominent Australian Sociologists, The Australian Sociology Association.

Her papers are in the national library of Australia.

Obituary '“Chippy” not a conventional academic, but an agent for change' Sydney Morning Herald April 10, 2024.

Lois Joyce Bryson was born on the 5th of October 1937 in Australia. Married to author of Evil Angels John Bryson. She has two children, Matt Bryson and Fran Bryson. Her long term partner was Martin Mowbray. Lois died on Sunday 7th January 2024, Carlton at age 86.^[22]