Margaret Archer

Margaret Archer FAcSS MAE
Archer in 2019
Born	(1943-01-20)20 January 1943 Grenoside, England
Died	21 May 2023(2023-05-21) (aged 80)
Other names	Margaret Scotford Archer
Academic background
Alma mater	London School of Economics
Thesis	The Educational Aspirations of English Working Class Parents (1967)
Doctoral advisor	David Glass
Influences	Roy Bhaskar[1] Lord Giddens
Academic work
Discipline	Sociology
Sub-discipline	Social theory sociology of education
School or tradition	Critical realism
Institutions	University of Reading University of Warwick
Main interests	Structure and agency
Notable works	Culture and Agency (1988) Realist Social Theory (1995) Being Human (2000)
Notable ideas	Elisionism

Margaret Scotford Archer FAcSS MAE (20 January 1943 – 21 May 2023) was a British sociologist, who spent most of her academic career at the University of Warwick where she was for many years Professor of Sociology. She was also a professor at l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. She is best known for coining the term elisionism in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. On 14 April 2014, Archer was named by Pope Francis to succeed former Harvard law professor and US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences,^[2] and served in this position until her retirement on 27 March 2019.