Annette Fitzsimons obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/15/annette-fitzsimons-obituary

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Ronald Reagan is said to have described economists as people who examine things that work in practice to see if they also work in theory. My friend and colleague Annette Fitzsimons, a social scientist, who has died of cancer aged 61, operated in the best traditions of liberal adult education, starting with experience, then applying theory to arrive at new prescriptions for practice.

Annette was intensely proud of her Irish working-class origins. She was born in Dublin, where her father worked at the Guinness factory and her mother was a cleaner. Annette left school at 13 to work in a butcher's shop. She moved to Hull in the early 1970s, trying many manual and clerical jobs, some of which featured in her later academic writings.

She took A-levels, an undergraduate degree in social sciences at Hull University, a master's at Leeds, a diploma at Huddersfield and a doctorate from the Open University. Along the way, she taught trade-union lay representatives, adding a feminist dimension, and fighting for better treatment of part-time tutors. She also made time to study Reiki healing and the Alexander technique.

Annette was appointed lecturer in social sciences at Hull College of Education (now Humberside University) in 1979 and at Hull University in 1999. She mostly worked with second-chance adult learners and she liked to make her students think. She developed and managed a highly respected youth and community degree at Hull. Her book Gender as a Verb (2002) explored workplace gender segregation in information technology.

Annette recruited vegetable packers into trade unions, marched for sacked Grunwick workers, camped at Greenham Common and supported striking miners' families in 1984. She was prominent in establishing the Centre for Gender Studies in Hull in 1986, a joint initiative of the city's two universities.

In the mid-70s she married Keith Russell and they lived in separate houses with almost adjoining gardens. Their houses were very different, but both were full of books, films, people, debate and argument about feminism, socialism and political change.

A late passion for gardening resulted in her acquiring an allotment where Annette grew fruit and vegetables she did not actually like just because they looked beautiful. She was also a keen walker and enjoyed detective novels. As her health deteriorated, she travelled widely with Keith in an effort to view every publicly available Picasso. He survives her.

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