Berry Mayall

Berry Mayall (c. 1936–2021) was a British academic and sociologist.

Mayall was born in Leicester. In 1958, she graduated in English from Newnham College in the University of Cambridge.[1]

She worked at the Institute of Education (now part of the University College London) as a childhood studies academic researcher[1] and set up the Sociology of Childhood and Children's Rights masters' degree at the university.[2] She argued that modern Western societies often marginalised input from children and adolescents,[3] and saw children as oppressed within society.[1] She also noted the connections between the children's rights movement and the early 20th-century feminist movement, especially in the latter's aims to improve the health and education of primary school-aged children.[4]

She died of cancer on 25 October 2021, aged 85.[1][2]