Mary John, who has died aged 85, spent a career converting childhood trauma into institutional reform. Hospitalised at seven with peritonitis and septicaemia, placed in an iron lung with no parental visits and no explanation, she later described herself as 'a child abandoned, bewildered, drugged, hallucinating and desperately solitary.' That experience became the engine of a four-decade project to give children and disabled people structural power within the systems that govern them. Her academic base was the Open University, where she joined in 1974 and worked closely with Vic Finkelstein on disability rights within the social sciences faculty. But her reach extended well beyond a single institution. She served on the US Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped under the Carter administration and helped establish the European Commission's Bureau for Action in Favour of Disabled People — building policy infrastructure on two continents simultaneously. The signal achievement came in 1992, when John hosted the first global conference on children's rights to involve children themselves at the University of Exeter. This was not a symbolic gesture. It was a methodological intervention: the people affected by rights frameworks should participate in designing them. She later edited the book series Children in Charge, including her own volume, Children's Rights and Power: Charging Up for a New Century (2003). Born in Wigan, Lancashire, to Elvira (née Evans) and William John, a headteacher, she studied psychology at the University of Nottingham, graduating in 1962. A Medical Research Council scholarship under Elizabeth and John Newson — who were revolutionising the study of parenting — followed. She completed her PhD on the social adjustment of children in 1996, lectured at Nottingham, Bristol, and Exeter, and returned to Exeter in 1990 as its first female professor of education. At Exeter she became dean of education, director of the Women's Studies Centre in 1995, and deputy vice-chancellor in 1996. Recognition came through a 1996 European Woman of Achievement award and an honorary doctorate from the OU in 1999 for her lifetime's work for disadvantaged people. After retiring in 1998, she continued as author, editor, and consultant. In 2008, while learning calligraphy, a stroke left her with severe disabilities. Characteristically, she analysed her own situation from a societal and academic perspective — the researcher's lens turned inward on the very systems she had spent decades trying to reform. She is survived by her sons Dan and Adam, four grandchildren — Cerys, Huw, Martha, and Harry — and her sister Heulwen. Her brother Gareth predeceased her.
