Jalna Hanmer obituary

Jalna Hanmer in Brighton, East Sussex, in 1996. From early on, her work centred on the victims and survivors of male violence; she described these women as ‘the experts’ Photograph: no credit asked for

Jalna Hanmer, who has died aged 91 of heart failure, was a leading feminist campaigner and scholar. In 1977 she founded the MA programme in women’s studies at the University of Bradford, an influential course that helped establish feminist studies as an academic field within sociology, both in the UK and internationally.

Hanmer saw academic research and publishing as a way of influencing the policy and practice of state agencies in tackling domestic violence and sexual assault and was a founder of the national charity Women’s Aid.