#ThanksForTyping … and the fieldwork

This article explores the role of social researchers’ wives in post-war British studies, in particular drawing on the diaries kept by the wives of two noted sociologists while their husbands, Peter Willmott and Dennis Marsden, were respectively undertaking studies in the working class communities of Bethnal Green and Salford. The wives – Phyllis Willmott and Pat Marsden, made contributions to the community studies in the mid 1950s/early 1960s, at the point where British sociology and social research was on the cusp of transition towards formalisation and professionalisation. The wives were co-opted into the academic endeavour. Their practices as part of their family lives became professionalised as they undertook knowledge gathering, bridging between community and scholarship for their husbands, and reflecting on their own practice. The paper enables contemporary social researchers to recognise the part played by the wives of major sociological figures in the establishment of the men’s reputations and the disciplinary enterprise of sociology.