About Hilary :

Hilary is a sociologist and Adjunct Professor at the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago (living and working mostly in London).

Much of Hilary’s work now focuses on the health and safety of children and vulnerable adults, gendered violence, and, particularly, female genital mutilation, about which she has researched and written two books, one a textbook on global and UK perspectives,
Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective (Ashgate / Taylor and Francis, 2015) and one a narrative about FGM by some 70 survivors, activists and professionals across two dozen countries and five continents,
Female Mutilation: The truth behind the horrifying global practice of female genital mutilation  (New Holland Publishers, 2016)
as well as two chapters in Routledge International Handbooks:
The Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health,
Chapter 33: Female genital mutilation and genital surgeries (2020)  and
The Routledge International Handbook of Harmful Cultural Practices, Chapter 12: FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Wellbeing (2023).

More about Hilary’s quarter century of research on, and lobbying to eradicate, FGM is at the end of this post, after a note on other aspects of her work, including economic influences and environmental challenges in these and wider matters such as science, education, regeneration, communities, health, gender / equality, patriarchy and cultural diversity.

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Hilary’s experiences (and navigating decades of personal and social change in the UK) …..

Hilary Burrage is an academic sociologist, environmentalist and pro-community activist. She has researched and provided consultancy on (amongst other matters) teenage pregnancy, early years provision, violence against women and girls, regeneration, the knowledge economy,  and, increasingly, environmental sustainability. For many years she taught Sociology at every level from introductory to post-graduate, and she continues to publish commentary, academic papers, book chapters and (so far) two complete books – see above.  Culture, communities and urban regeneration via the knowledge / arts economy, along with minority ethnic music and arts in Britain, are other subjects in which she has been actively engaged. She also undertakes journalistic assignments.

Hilary’s formal positions and standing
Hilary is Adjunct Professor, Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University, Chicago (but normally resident in London).

She is a full member of the Institute of  Health Promotion and Education (MIHPE)  and a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)

Academic qualifications
As a student Hilary gained a place as an  American Field Service scholar; she completed her 1965-6 year in the USA as a graduate of North Phoenix High School, Arizona.

Hilary began her undergraduate studies in London focusing on natural science, but ended them as a social scientist. Her Master’s studies in the Sociology of Science and Technology at the technological University of Salford brought many of her varied interests together.

Hilary’s formal qualifications are B.Sc.(Soc)(Hons),  M.Sc. (Sociology of Science and Technology), PGCE (Post-Graduate Certificate in Education)  She also later undertook considerable research for a PhD, looking at teenage pregnancy in disadvantaged communities, but ill-health prevented these studies being completed.

Following invitations to join these bodies, Hilary’s post-nominals are MIHPE and FRSA.

Education
Hilary originally trained as a school teacher (key stages 1-3), taking the Post Graduate Certificate in Education course, toddler in tow, at Liverpool University.  Her aim was to learn how to teach basic skills, so she could better support her college students, some of whom began their studies very unprepared for what lay ahead.

In the 1970s Hilary wrote the first Sociology Access course and collaborated in setting up such courses in Liverpool for ‘returning adults’ (including creche facilities etc);
She also wrote the first Equal Opportunities policy document for Liverpool colleges.

Hilary has been a member of various Sociology examination committees for O-level, A-level etc. and has taught in further education, higher education, as a distance tutor for the Open University and as a staff lecturer at Liverpool University, and before that teaching ‘Police in the Community’ courses to cadet recruits, as well as in a high security prison (young serious offenders on Her Majesty’s Pleasure) .  She also taught the excellent ‘In A Nutshell’ Homes and Communities Agency Understanding Place-making course on regeneration and sustainable communities.  For some years she held a post as Senior Lecturer in (Health and) Social Care, during which time she was responsible for the training of e.g. nursery nurses, pre-nursing students, mature social carers on day release, and students aiming via A-levels for university.

Hilary is now an Adjunct Professor, Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University, Chicago, USA, where she collaborates via the www with colleagues on e.g. the economic factors underlying the continuation of FGM. She has colleagues and contacts across the globe in this research.   She has delivered many presentations, including several at the University of Oxford and in Geneva for a United Nations conference.

Hilary is frequently asked to review or advise on academic papers and theses.

Sociology as a subject
1980s Editor of the Association for the Teaching of the Social Sciences (ATSS) journal Social Science Teacher (fascinating very early ‘pre-Hilary’ copies of 1970s journals here; later editions now held by the BSA), and member at that time of the British Sociological Association executive committee.  ATSS merged with the BSA in 2012.

In 1986 Hilary instigated and led as convenor the national organisation FACTASS: The Joint Forum of Academic and Teaching Associations in the Social Sciences. This group successfully campaigned against the Conservative government to ensure that the social sciences and related subjects remained on the intended (school) national curriculum, at a time when this inclusion was endangered.

See also Power, Politics, People And The Sociological Prism for Hilary’s take on being a sociologist.

Sociological research and consultancy
…has included
Women university teachers of natural science (UK)
Inner city teenage pregnancy
two local evaluations of Sure Start programmes: Sure Start in Halewood: Service Provision Overview and another one for Preston, focusing on language development
Evaluation of an inner-city programme in Salford to support attendance of disadvantaged middle-school children
FGM programmes and activists (for The Guardian, whose EndFGM campaign Hilary advised)
Economic costs and consequences of FGM globally

This is an article about Hilary from Applied Worldwide – which has a ‘mission to enhance a vision of applied sociology’ – in which she answered questions about her approach to, and use of, sociological research and investigations.

Regeneration
Hilary founded and for more than a decade led (as a volunteer) HOPES: The Hope Street Association, which successfully brought together virtually all parts of the public knowledge economy in Liverpool – arts, universities, professional interests and faith leaders.  HOPES grew to become a registered charity.
In the course of this campaign to benefit everyone in that location (and in the city) Hilary edited and published the Hope Street Papers, for which the then Secretary of State for the DCMS, Chris (now Lord) Smith wrote a preface.
HOPES was also selected, from some 340 Millennium Festivals nation-wide, for Hilary to make a presentation to the Millennium Commissioners towards the end of that year.
The ‘new’ Hope Street was subsequently chosen as winner of  The Great Street Award in the national Urbanism Awards 2013. Co-ordinated by the Academy of Urbanism, the awards recognise the best urban places in Europe.
The (quite substantial) HOPES archive over the decade and a half of action is held by the University of Liverpool.

As an elected director of the British Urban Regeneration Association around the same time Hilary regularly wrote and spoke about aspects of equality and diversity (see eg Regeneration Rethink: Acknowledging Equality and Diversity) and about the knowledge economy.  She focused particularly on community, inclusion and environmental sustainability (as below).

Science
Following science A-levels (girls had to sit at the back of some classes) and the start of a degree in natural science, Hilary turned to the social sciences, where she found her niche.  Perhaps the way she came to Sociology explains her first research efforts, investigating the backgrounds and experiences of women university sciences.

Continuing to be fascinated by the ways in which science evolves, Hilary then became involved in the work on SANA and BSSRS, both groups initiated by concerned Nobel prize-winning scientists and their colleagues. These groups later merged with others to become Scientists for Global Responsibility. Over time debate in these groups largely focused on the dangers of ‘big science’, chemical and biological weapons, future nuclear war, global climate change and environmental threats.

In 1986 Hilary delivered at their invitation a paper on the power and influence of leading scientists, to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences / SANA symposium of The Socio-Economic Consequences of World War Three, in Budapest, attended by academics from across Europe (both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’).

Further work included collaboration with scientists leading the Liverpool-Manchester research facility at Daresbury Laboratory, as they sought to gain (inter)national funding to develop their nuclear and related research based in the North West of England.  This work later extended to developing a group of leading natural and health scientists in university departments around Hope Street in Liverpool.

Environment and sustainability
Learning much from her Friends of the Earth membership in the 1970s, Hilary has over time moved to more mainstream activity.

During the last Labour administration Hilary was Deputy Chair, appointed jointly by the NW Regional Assembly and NW Development Agency, of the NW Region Sustainability Group, where she emphasised the criticality of including diverse communities.

She was also appointed (a government ministerial appointment) a member of the Defra Science Advisory Council. Amongst her tasks there was co-authorship of the report on the role of social science in developing Defra policy: Social Research In Environmental Contexts (A DEFRA Science Advisory Council Paper, 2007)

Hilary’s paper  Green Hubs As Social Inclusion And Community Engagement (published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Municipal Engineer, Volume 164 Issue 3, September 2011, pp. 167-174) was nominated in 2012 for an Institution of Civil Engineers Award, and continues to be read and referenced.  More recently, she prepared and presented to community activists this detailed paper on COP26, The Future, And Progressive Politics.

Music, arts and culture
Way back, whilst a student Hilary also studied as a coloratura soprano at Birmingham Conservatoire and Goldsmiths College – heady days! She later sang as a member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir.

Having whilst still a student married Martin Anthony Burrage (‘Tony’) – a professional violinist in that same Orchestra (the RLPO) eventually for almost half a century – Hilary was involved in the cultural life of Liverpool for many years.  She served six years (the maximum) as an elected Director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society (including the RLPO) and chaired the Arts and Culture Committee of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. These positions also helped with the HOPES regeneration work, as above.

For over a decade Hilary developed, secured support / funding for, and managed, with the HOPES team she developed and led, both the annual summer Hope Street (arts and music) Festival and the annual Hotfoot on Hope Street concert at the Philharmonic Hall (see also Millennium activities, above).
Hilary was also manager of Ensemble Liverpool (aka Live-A-Music), a group of fully professional players led by Tony who performed music by then lesser known ‘diverse’ composers such as Amy Beach, William Hurlstone , Ethel Smyth and, importantly (see below), Coleridge-Taylor (as well as the established chamber music canon) in local accessible venues, at very low ticket prices.

Invited by the BBC, Hilary with HOPES graduate trainees (HOPES was based nearby the Toxteth area of the city) also provided the back-room support for the Liverpool 1998 Windrush celebrations. Building respectful connections with that community was critical for the development of the Hope Street Quarter development, which would benefit everyone.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Liverpool in the 1980s was a fragile city.  For a while there were even violent clashes in disadvantaged areas of the city such as Toxteth, the location particularly of most of the city’s ‘Black’ communities.  Toxteth is geographically close to both Liverpool University and the Philharmonic Hall on Hope Street, the home of the RLPO.  Both Hilary and her husband were therefore very much aware of the fractures in the local environment, and of the dislocation of local people from the ‘exclusive pinnacle of culture’ which the close-by Philharmonic Hall and Liverpool University especially were said to represent. It was felt that more attention to excellent ‘classical’ musicians who were not white might help to bridge this divide; and so the focus by Hilary and Tony slowly fell onto almost unknown Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, of whom Tony had heard whilst at the Royal Academy of Music. Hilary set out to actually locate his works, and Tony spent many hours organising the music and players for them to be performed.

Ensemble Liverpool and the HOPES Festival Orchestra thus focused particularly on the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), who had strong connections with Liverpool during his short life.  Hilary managed to unearth the SCT Op. 1 Piano Quintet score which in 2001, which Tony realised (i.e. wrote single instrument playing part scores for) and delivered, at a recital at the Philharmonic Hall, the first performance in over one hundred years.

Early on Daniel Labonne, founder and chair of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society in Croydon, asked that Hilary, Tony and Richard Gordon-Smith (also a professional musician) take forward Coleridge-Taylor’s work, and so the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation was formed, and a website (and LinkedIn group) developed, to do so.  Coleridge-Taylor’s work is now standard repertoire.

Most recently, Hilary and Tony featured in Search for the Blue Note, a short documentary about Coleridge-Taylor by Stephen Brolan, which was selected for showing at the 2023 London Independent Film Festival.

Trades unions and Labour politics

Hilary has been a trade unionist and member of the Labour Party for almost her entire adult life.  She has represented her college union at the Liverpool Trades Union Council, was a NW Executive Committee member of the Musicians’ Union,  then Deputy Chair of the Liverpool NATFHE (college lecturers’) union, and later chaired the Liverpool Riverside Constituency Labour Party (CLP) for several years.  Before that she was Hon Secretary of the Merseyside West European Constituency Labour Party.  When (Dame) Louise Ellman was elected the MP for Liverpool Riverside Hilary became her Election Agent for three further elections.  Since moving to London Hilary has been Hon Secretary of her current CLP and Women’s Officer for her Branch.  She remains a member of the Society of Authors.

Health and social services
Health matters have underwritten much of Hilary’s work.  Early on she was a member of collaborations such as the Liverpool ‘Ethnic Minorities Health Group’, which was concerned with issues such as safe and appropriate translation and service provision for all patients in clinical settings. Around that time she also had experience working as a social worker in a very disadvantaged part of the city.

Later, Hilary became a Non-Executive Director (NED) of Merseyside NHS Ambulance Trust, where she had responsibility for human resources and for children and vulnerable adults.  In this role she became acutely aware of the huge risks of cruelty and abuse that some children experience.  This has led her to believe that a national system of alerts to protect children and vulnerable adults, whatever the kind of peril they face, is essential.

Hilary has a strong commitment to properly evidenced and appropriately contextualised health science.  For that reason she has long sought to engage with (and utilize the methodologies of) work by epidemiologists and community clinicians.  These two approaches are not however identical, as she first argued in her 1987 Social Science & Medicine paper, ‘Epidemiology and Community Health: a strained connection?’, which was later cited by WHO, and continues to be referenced.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) and Patriarchy Incarnate
FGM was almost unknown in the UK in the twentieth century.  Hilary came to learn of it early because sometime in the 1980s her mother attended a Quaker or Amnesty meeting where discussion of this horrific practice arose.  It was some time later, however, before it was possible to learn much more about it (other than the UK Parliament passed a law in 1986 prohibiting it…); we had to wait for the development of the internet to explore FGM more seriously.

Many of the matters pursued above have however subsequently fed into Hilary’s work on female genital mutilation (FGM), a focus she has now had for some quarter century, and about which she has written many posts, papers, two topic-specific academic chapters in relevant academic readers, and two full books, one of them a leading textbook on the subject.  (In 2016 Hilary was delighted to receive a Global Woman P.E.A.C.E.Foundation #EndFGM Award for these two books.) This website (www.hilaryburrage.com) carries or references almost all these works.

Amongst Hilary’s professional engagement in ‘EndFGM’ programme was her work with The Guardian on the campaign to do just that.  Much of that work involved behind-the-scenes development of the petition, but also a few commentaries about FGM written by Hilary  were published, e.g. ‘FGM: a costly, organised crime against women and girls‘ and this letter: ‘FGM and disability also hinder girls’ education‘.

Hilary has submitted several responses to FGM national enquiries, such as this one to the 2014 Home Affairs Select Committee Enquiry.  She has also worked closely with other EndFGM organisations such as  EU REPLACE2 programme, the Nottingham-based Mojatu Foundation and the Action:FGM Manifesto to End FGM in the UK by 2030.

There have also been reports about Hilary’s work, such as that by the AHA Foundation.

Two aspects of FGM and other violence against women and girls (VAWG) which Hilary identifies as helpful ideas concerning the eradication of FGM are the wider economic contexts and the inter-related notion of patriarchy incarnate.  (Both also apply to varying degrees in the subjugation of some men and boys.)  These are themes which will require much more investigation if FGM is to be ended.

[For Hilary’s formal CV see here.]

A personal post-script
Writing has always been part of my life, and it has served me well as my expected professional path took a big serve.  I had thought that I would be a teacher and sometimes researcher in further and higher education until retirement at the usual age.  Fate however had other plans for me (and in any case I am now well past the normal age of retirement).

Some fifty-plus years ago I contracted a serious bout of mononucleosis, also called glandular fever, and we now know that that was probably one reason that by my early thirties I was experiencing conditions later identified as psoriatic arthritis and fibromyalgia. (Glandular fever, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, can also reactivate to produce symptoms like Long Covid, as I have for some time over the past few years suspected – though no-one was aware of that back then.)  By my mid-forties I had no option but to retire from my teaching post, much as this decision would hit my confidence (and indeed my pocket). I was perpetually exhausted, often barely able to walk out of the house, and simply too ill, from all sorts of consequences of my condition, to continue.

Two things, alongside what medical support was available, saw me through. One was the constant support of my husband Tony, our daughter and our wider family and friends.

The other thing was… an Amstrad ‘laptop-type’ small personal computer, which my medical consultant (who had a secretary, so no need for such gadgets) instructed me to acquire: ‘You need to keep your mind busy…. one of those Amstrad things…’   He was right; this was the beginning of my voyage of discoveries about FGM, global environmental issues, women’s health, politics (I am involved with the Fabians and Labour) and much else.

Of course, with time not only did the computing develop, but so also to a rather modest extent – mine is just a boring, often ‘middle-aged woman’, chronic condition – did the treatment I received; and, importantly, my capacity to navigate the health conditions I was experiencing also improved.  It had indeed been essential that I stop everything for quite a while, to reorientate and (physically and psychologically) to accommodate more realistically the constraints of my dis-ease.  So now, a quarter century later, I know to be realistic about how often I need to take a break, and how much in actual, real time I can actually ‘do’; but I also know, in the sense of continuing to learn, a great deal more about things sociological that matter to me, than I did back then. My typing remains awful, but the range of ideas I can call upon when I am doing so is hugely bigger than before I ‘adopted’ information technology – as too is my community of friends, colleagues and contacts around the world.

So why have I chosen to share this post-script? The answer is partly to thank those who showed such understanding when I most needed it, partly to put into context – why should any of us feel embarrassment about disability? – what may seem my rather jumbled herstory and directions of travel, and partly to share my experience of a ‘career’ upended.  We are all different; but perhaps this may help or encourage a few others diagnosed with chronic conditions gently to explore ways forward, even as they look back with regret to their previously better health.

It just takes time…  and, thank you.