Professor Chris Bellamy (9 Oct 1946 - 25 May 2017)

In loving memory of Professor Chris Bellamy who sadly passed away on 25th May 2017

Christine Bellamy (9.10.46-25.5.17), who has died aged 70, was a distinguished political scientist and historian. Her major contribution was to understanding the British state’s long-term development, explaining its capacities by the formal and informal institutions shaping its processing of information. Her book on the Local Government Board (1871 to 1919) remains the definitive study. “Governing in the information age”, written with John Taylor, redirected the entire international literature on “digital government”.

Educated at Twickenham County Grammar School, Chris completed her PhD at Nottingham University in 1975. Much of her career was spent at Nottingham Trent University, formerly Trent Polytechnic. Chris became Associate Dean (Research and Postgraduate Studies) in the university’s College of Business, Law and Social Sciences. A great institution builder and inspirational leader, she brought together a team of distinguished research professors including Nicholas Tilley, Irene Hardill, Peter Dwyer and Perri 6. She was also a mentor and teacher, and many of her students remember her patience, encouragement and sense of humour with great affection.

In exemplary service to her profession, Chris played leading roles in the Academy of Social Sciences where she was elected a fellow in 2003, chaired the Joint University Council (which made her a lifetime honorary fellow) and its Public Administration Committee for many years, served on the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise politics panel, sat on many Economic and Social Research Council committees and on the Steering Group for the International Benchmarking Exercise for Politics research. She gave evidence to several parliamentary select committees and advised many government departments. These included giving evidence to the Select Committee on Public Administration: Examination of Witness on 17th May 2000, following submission of Memorandum (subject: electronic democracy and public participation). In 2006-2008 she advised the Department of Communities and Local Government and cabinet committee MISC 31 on data sharing and privacy. In 2006, she presented the findings of the ESRC-funded research on data sharing and privacy in multi-agency working, to the Parliamentary IT Committee and (by invitation) in March 2003 advised the Commission of the European Communities Study of Back Office Integration in support of E-Government on identifying best practice.

Against both the fashionable utopianism that computing would enable the “reinvention” of government, and against pessimism that technology would necessarily introduce the panopticon dystopia, Chris used her long historical perspective on information handling in British government to show technology does not make the state. Rather, enduring institutionalised practices of public services and parliamentary accountability shape the uses of technology. Her detailed archival research demonstrated that the British state had neither capabilities nor intentions for either drastic integration or comprehensive surveillance. Her ESRC-funded work in the 2000s on how public services strike different settlements between rival imperatives for joint working and client confidentiality stands preeminent in its field. Often ferociously critical of fashionable nostrums in political science and practical public administration, Chris argued for taking both institutions and empirical nuance seriously. Her deep commitments to combining craft of research with rigorous design and to teaching led to her widely used textbook, “Principles of methodology”. She worked until her death on her administrative history of identity management in British government from the nineteenth century to the present.

As well as being a noted academic, Chris was also a loyal friend, wife, mother, stepmother and grandmother. She had a wonderful sense of humour and a very down to earth manner, and strong sense of family. She took great pleasure in hosting family parties and having extended family around her - grandchildren enjoyed coming to stay (and falling in the pond!). Her garden was one of her particular prides, and she was also a great source of plants for other members of her family.

She enjoyed many forms of music, both listening and playing, and supported the Music for Everyone movement in Nottingham, singing alto in the Nottingham Festival Chorus, and in the West Bridgeford Daytime Voices. An accomplished recorder player she played tenor recorder in the Leicester Recorder Players.

With her husband David she spent many times on their yacht, either in heavy winds going between the East coast and Cowes, or enjoying summer evenings moored up listening to music with a glass of wine and reading. She was an avid reader of all types of literature from biography to novels, and her Kindle was seldom far from her.

She is survived by David, daughter Alice and grandchildren, Emily and Thomas, step daughter Sam and stepson Phillip.