Obituaries

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Ben Ball

Ben Ball OBE, who has died aged 52, was one of the country's leading practitioners in careers guidance, as well as a theorist who significantly helped to shape the development of the profession over three decades.

Ben moved from Hertfordshire in 1974 to set up the first careers service at Brighton Polytechnic, now the University of Brighton. His first formal links with Sussex were as a student on the MA in Education, which he completed in 1987.

In 1989 Ben came to Sussex as a member of staff, initially to focus again on direct career guidance to individuals, but later becoming director and then associate director of the careers service on campus.

During the 1990s Ben led the Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE) initiative at Sussex, which involved him in a number of careers/employment-related projects but, more importantly, in evaluating the whole scheme.

He was co-author of Developing Students' Career Planning Skills - The Impact of the Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative (1993), which had a major influence on the subsequent development of career-management skills in the higher education academic curriculum.

Ben also spent a sabbatical year at the campus-based Institute for Employment Studies (IES), where he was involved in two major studies, one of school-industry links and another of the demand for highly qualified labour in information technology.

More recently, his specialist knowledge of the graduate labour market led Ben to propose a joint research study between IES and the Career Development Unit into the early career paths of Sussex graduates, which resulted in two publications, What do graduates do? (1995) and What do graduates do next? (1997).

It is an indication of Ben's exceptional qualities that he achieved so much at Sussex while also battling with a rare form of brain cancer. The scale of his accomplishments both locally and nationally were recognised this summer when he was presented with an OBE at a small ceremony in the Meeting House.

Eduard Goldstücker

Eduard Goldstücker, Professor of Comparative Literature in EURO during the 1970s, has died aged 87 in his native Prague. A leading figure in the 'Prague spring' reform movement of 1968, he came to Britain and the professorship at Sussex after the Soviet-led invasion forced him into exile. Goldstücker returned to Czechoslovakia after the collapse of communism in 1989.