My mother, Judy Giles, who has died of ovarian cancer aged 69, played a pioneering role in the establishment and development of women’s studies as a respected academic subject. A late arrival to academia, Judy viewed her subject from a well-rounded background and broad perspective.
The elder of two children, Judy was born in Lancashire, to Dorothy (nee Holland) and Douglas Major, both lawyers, and grew up in the village of Tardebigge, near Bromsgrove, in the West Midlands. Here her parents’ love of the bottle and a party made for a chaotic environment and the need to be self-sufficient from a young age. Despite this, her mother was, in 1936, one of the first women to be called to the bar.
Judy went to Edgbaston high school and Kings Norton girls’ grammar school. In the 60s, her first marriage, to Colin Giles, a press operator whom she met at Bromsgrove jazz club in Perry Hall hotel, Bromsgrove, in 1964, was quickly followed by the birth of two sons, and, six years later, a daughter. She studied through the Open University and then gained a first-class degree in English from Worcester College of Higher Education. The marriage broke down and Judy moved to York University to begin her PhD. In 1989 she became the first person in the UK to gain a doctorate in women’s studies.
She went on to lecture at York St John University. Recognised by her students as an inspiring and utterly committed teacher, Judy was also widely respected in the international research community. In 2000 she was awarded a one-year research fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust. Among her four published works was The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity (2005), based on her thesis research.
Judy was committed to a study of culture, literature and history that challenged conventional ways of seeing the world. For instance, she studied the interwar period with a focus on the experience of women at home. This year, York St John University created a research award in her name.
In 1987 Judy met Barrie Linfoot, a driving instructor, and the couple made their home together in York; they married shortly before her death. In July 2008, Judy retired. She was diagnosed that summer with ovarian cancer, and faced it with the same determination, resilience, positivity and dignity she had shown in her personal and professional life.
She is survived by Barrie, her three children, Nick, Catherine and me, and her step-children, Marcus and Gemma.
