Joyce Lishman

Joyce Lishman (May 1947 – 20 January 2021) the first woman Professor at Robert Gordon University, was a leader in social work education and research.

In 2018, Lishman was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh,

Lishman authored twenty-six books. These included a social work and social care handbook which over 25 years went to three editions (latest in 2015), and in 1994, another Communication in Social Work was one of the standard texts for social work practitioner education.

For many years Lishman served on the Social Services Scotland Council, having been appointed in 2012 by the Scottish Minister for Education and Young People, for her experience in education and the third sector.

She also chaired the heads of social work education group for Scotland and brought together standards for excellence in education in this field including the first interactive digital learning resources for social work in the world, now known as IRISS. In 2010, her School of Applied Social Sciences and the Business School at RGU together with a private leadership and organisational development company (The Taylor Clarke Partnership Ltd.) won a National Training Award for 'Collaboration & Partnership' developing social services leaders across Scotland.

Lishman also served on the board of charitable bodies: Lloyds TSB Foundation (now Corra), Aberlour Child Care Trust and Voluntary Service Aberdeen. She became the chair of the Partnership Drugs Initiative and a founding member of the philanthropic charity Inspiring Scotland in 2008.

When Lishman was appointed as professorial head of the school of applied sociology in 1993, she was the first female professor at Robert Gordon University (RGU), Aberdeen. She established the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (now CELCIS) in 2000, bringing together specialists from RGU, Strathclyde University and other bodies to improve training standards and practice in the third sector and also influence government policy for 'looked after' children.

In 1985, she became a lecturer then senior lecturer at what was then the Robert Gordon Institute of Technology. In 1986, Lishman completed her PhD at Aberdeen University, with a study using videos to examine social work interviews.

Joyce Major was born in Castleford, Yorkshire to Stanley Major, a salesmen and Kathleen Major née Leicester, a French teacher. She met and married Roly Lishman who was a computing science PhD student at the time, whilst she was working in social work in Edinburgh. They moved to Aberdeen in 1977 and whilst working on her own PhD, they had two children Tamsin and Ben. When she died in 2021, she was also a grandmother to three grandchildren.

Lishman was the first pupil from her girls' high school in Normanton to be admitted to Oxford University, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics, graduating in 1968. She then went to study social studies and social work at Edinburgh University graduating in 1970, and practiced as a social worker in child and family psychology. This experience she built on later in her career by developing a new social work service for children suffering from cancer or leukemia and their families, including bereavement care for the Malcolm Sargent Fund (now Young Lives vs Cancer or CLIC Sargent).