Margaret Sharp, Baroness Sharp of Guildford

Margaret Sharp, Baroness Sharp of Guildford (2009)

Margaret Lucy Sharp, Baroness Sharp of Guildford (born November 21, 1938 ) is a British economist and politician who has been a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords since 1998 .

Life

Professional career and unsuccessful lower house candidates

After schooling completed Margaret Sharp studying economics and was after graduating first from 1960 to 1963 assistant to the principal of the Ministry of Commerce ( Board of Trade ) and the Treasury ( Treasury ) before then from 1963 to 1972 as a lecturer of economics at taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She then worked part-time between 1973 and 1976 as a guest researcher (Guest Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC ) and, after her return to Great Britain, worked from 1977 to 1981 as an economic consultant in the NEDO ( National Economic Development Office) ). She then worked as a research scientist at the European Research Center at the University of Sussex between 1981 and 1984 and then from 1984 to 2000 as a senior scientist at the Political Science Research Unit of the University of Sussex.

In the meantime, Margaret Sharp, who was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 , began her political career and ran for the SDP in the general election on June 9, 1983 and on June 11, 1987 in the Guildford constituency, each unsuccessfully for a member of parliament in the House of Commons . In 1988 she was one of the co-founders of the Liberal Democrats , which emerged from the SDP and the Liberal Party , and applied for a seat in the House of Commons again unsuccessfully for them in the Guildford constituency in the general election on April 9, 1992 and May 1, 1997 . Between 1992 and 2004 she was not only a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Liberal Democrats, but also vice-chairwoman of that body from 1995 to 1996 and 1998 to 1999.

She later became involved in the scientific organization Save British Science , from which the Campaign for Science and Engineering emerged, and was initially a member of the executive committee from 1988 to 1997 and has been a member of its advisory board since 1997.

House of Lords

Margaret Sharp was raised to the nobility by a letters patent dated August 1, 1998 as a life peeress with the title Baroness Sharp of Guildford , of Guildford in the County of Surrey . Shortly thereafter, she was introduced as a member of the House of Lords . In the upper house it belongs to the faction of the Liberal Democrats.

During her membership in the House of Lords, Baroness Sharp was briefly spokesperson for the Liberal Democratic Group on higher education in 2000 and then from 2000 to 2004 first spokesperson for education and employment, before she was spokesperson for further education, higher education and skills from 2004 to 2007. She has also served as a member of the Weyfield Parish Elementary School Board of Directors since 2005 and as a member of the Guildford College Society for Secondary Education since 2006. After she was spokeswoman for the group of the Liberal Democrats for innovation, universities and skills from 2007 to 2009, she then acted as spokeswoman for her party in the House of Lords for Science and Technology from 2009 to 2010. From 2011 to 2012, Baroness Sharp was finally Chair of the College Committee of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE ).

Publications

In addition to her academic, professional and political career, Margaret Sharp has written numerous articles on scientific and technology-political topics in specialist journals and several non-fiction books. Her best-known publications include:

• The State, the Enterprise and the Individual (1974)
• The New Biotechnology: European Governments in search of a strategy (1985)
• Europe and the New Technologies (Editor, 1985)
• Managing Change in British Industry (co-author Geoffrey Shepherd, 1986)
• Strategies for New Technologies (Associate Editor Peter Holmes, 1987)
• European Technological Collaboration (co-author Claire Shearman, 1987)
• Technology and the Future of Europe (co-editor, 1992)
• Technology Policy in the European Union (co-author John Peterson, 1998)

Web links

• Entry on Parliament's homepage (accessed on November 29, 2012)
• Margaret Sharp at Hansard (English)
• Entry in They Work For You (accessed November 29, 2012)
• Biography in Debrett's (accessed November 29, 2012)