Gordon Marshall CBE FBA (born 20 June 1952)[1] is a British sociologist and former Director of the Leverhulme Trust in England.
[4] Between 2007 and 2011 he was also Chairman of the Higher Education Statistics Agency, and from 2013 to 2017 was Chair of the UK Data Service/Digital Information Strategic Advisory Committee.
Described as a team player who led quietly but with focus, it is no surprise that Marshall later insisted that any success under his direction was a collective effort and attributable to all staff at the Council.
His main fields of research include social exclusion, equality of opportunity, distributive justice and the culture of economic enterprise, and he has written widely on these topics.
He argued persuasively that political intervention is required to prevent class inequalities from impeding the advance of social justice.
During the 1990s Marshall also played an important part in the creation of the department of sociology at Oxford University, in the teeth of some stiff resistance, especially from among the political scientists who wanted to subsume the subject under their discipline.