Barnett House:
Presidents, Directors and Heads
Barnett House: 1914-1957
1914–18 Sidney Ball (1857–1918): A Fellow of St John’s College, Ball was a University reformer, Fabian, excellent teacher, and ‘one of the generation of dons moved by the social question’. He
was an admirer of T H Green and a friend of Samuel Barnett, and the ideas for Toynbee Hall and later for Barnett House were first outlined in his college rooms.
1918–24 Arthur Lionel Smith (1850–1924): Master of Balliol College, he was a wonderful teacher and a passionate advocate of continuing and adult education. He was keen on university
reform, encouraging working class, women, and overseas entrants.
1924–28 Joseph Wells (1855–1929): Classicist, Warden of Wadham College 1913–27, member of the Hebdomadal Council 1914–27, and Vice-Chancellor of the University 1923–26. He was
a devout Anglican and a friend of Samuel Barnett. He was on the council of the Oxford House settlement in Bethnal Green. While not a university reformer, he was on the council of Lady
Margaret Hall, and delivered university extension lectures.
1928–49 William George Stewart Adams (1874–1966): Son of a Lanarkshire head master who was an educational reformer and great friend of Livingstone, he worked as an economics
lecturer at the University of Chicago before teaching at Manchester University from 1903. He returned to Oxford to lecture on political science, and in 1912 was appointed Gladstone Professor;
he held this post until becoming Warden of All Souls in 1933. His influences were A L Smith (whom he had first met as a student at Balliol), Samuel Barnett and Horace Plunkett.
1949–51 David Macgregor (1877–1953): Educated in Edinburgh and Cambridge, and elected to a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1904. From 1908 to 1919 he was Professor
of Economic and Political Science at Leeds University. During the First World War he served in the army in France and Italy. He was a member of the government’s ‘committee on labour
exchanges’ from 1920 and served on several trade boards.
1951–57 Julia Mann (1891–1985): Took the diploma in social science at the LSE while living in the Women’s Settlement in Southwark. During the First World War she served as a clerk in the
Admiralty, and then in the Foreign Office. In 1919 she returned to Oxford to take the diploma in economics, then returned to the LSE to study for a PhD on the cotton industry in 1922, but
by 1923 had been appointed economics tutor and vice-principal of St Hilda’s College (then St Hilda’s Hall), Oxford. She became principal in 1928, a position she retained until her retirement in
1955.
Barnett House: University Delegacy 1946–1960
1946–48 Christina Violet Butler (1884–1982): Took a first class honours degree in modern history at Oxford as a member of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, and obtained a distinction
in the diploma in economics and political science in 1909. She published her first book in 1912, Social Conditions in Oxford, to some acclaim, which confirmed her as a social reformer who used
patient and thorough local social enquiry to give force to recommendations for change. She gained a teaching qualification at the LSE, but returned as a tutor in social training for Barnett House
and in economics for the Society of Oxford Home-Students, roles she maintained until retirement in 1948. She worked for the Ministry of Munitions in the First World War, writing part of its
official history.
1948–62 Leonard Barnes (1895–1977): In 1914, instead of continuing as planned to Oxford, he went straight to the Western Front in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps. He was one of a handful of
officers who survived, invalided out with shrapnel wounds shortly before the armistice in 1918. For the rest of his life he had only partial use of one of his legs. He graduated from Oxford in
1921 with a classics degree. Initially he followed his father into the Colonial Office, but in 1925 departed with a friend to farm in South Africa. Finding the farm was on land requisitioned from
the local Zulu, he began a lifelong task of documenting colonialism in Africa and recommending reforms, first as a campaigning journalist and later as a writer. In 1932 he returned to Britain and
in 1935 became a lecturer in social and political theory at Liverpool University. He moved to Oxford in 1948.
Barnett House: University Department 1960 to date
1962–90 A H Halsey: Trained as an RAF pilot at the end of the Second World War. After the war he trained as a teacher but then moved to the LSE, completing a doctorate on social class and
educational opportunity. After a short spell as a sociology lecturer in Liverpool he moved to Birmingham University, with a visiting professorship at Chicago and worked for the OECD in Paris.
In 1962 he was appointed director of Barnett House with a fellowship at Nuffield College, and remained until he formally retired in 1990. Over this period he built a reputation as one of the
outstanding sociologists of his generation, and with Jean Floud was the pre-eminent figure in the ociology of education. He also acted as an adviser to the UK government on education.
1990–97 Stein Ringen: Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Green Templeton College. He was Professor of Welfare Studies at the University of Stockholm and has held
visiting professorships and fellowships in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Brno, Barbados, Jerusalem, Sydney and at Harvard University. He has been Assistant Director General in the Norwegian Ministry
of Justice, a consultant to the United Nations, and a news and feature reporter with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
1997–2005 Teresa Smith: Studied ‘Greats’ at Oxford before teaching in Thailand. She returned to Oxford in 1966 to take the diploma in social and administrative studies, and then worked for
the Oxford Council of Social Service before being recruited in 1969 by A H Halsey to work in the West Riding EPA. She began teaching part-time in the department in 1974. Her research has
focused on community, social regeneration, family and childcare, and the evaluation of community basedet Office, and was a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Children Schools and
Families Select Committee during its inquiries into children’s centres and social work training 2004–10.
2005–07 George Smith: Completed his first degree at Oxford reading the traditional ‘Greats’ course (classical history and philosophy), and then taught English in South India. He returned in
1966 to take a graduate course in sociology at Oxford supervised by A H Halsey and Jean Floud. He was then research officer on action-research projects and other evaluations run through
Barnett House in different parts of the UK, combining this from 1975 with a half-time teaching post in Oxford on the social work degree. His research interests include social programme
evaluation, education in its social context, social security, poverty and its measurement. From the early 1980s he was research adviser for HM Inspectorate of Schools, later Ofsted, in London.
2007–11 Peter Kemp is Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs and a professor in the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Prior to moving to Oxford in 2006 he was
Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York (2002–06); the Professor of Housing and Social Policy at the University of Glasgow (1996–
2002); and the inaugural Joseph Rowntree Professor of Housing Policy, and founding director of the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York (1990–95).
2011– Martin Seeleib-Kaiser: Barnett Professor of Comparative Social Policy and Politics, and Professorial Fellow of St Cross College. He studied political science, American studies and public
law at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich (Germany) (MA 1989; DPhil 1993). In 2001, he was awarded the venia legendi in political science (habilitation) by Bremen University. Prior to
his initial appointment as University Lecturer at Oxford in 2004, he held appointments at the Universities of Bremen and Bielefeld (Germany) as well as Duke University (North Carolina, USA).
His research focuses on the politics of social policy and comparative social policy analysis.