Cora Baldock

Cora Vellekoop Baldock (born 16 December 1935) is an Australian-Dutch Sociologist. She was president of the Australian Sociological Association 1979-1980 and served as a member of the Australian Federal Government's Multicultural Advisory Committee. She was the first female professor at Murdoch University, Perth, and its first professor of sociology.

Biography Cora Baldock was born Corrie Vellekoop on 16 December 1935 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

She grew up with relatives who worked in academia, which influenced her decision to study sociology at Leiden University, from which she graduated cum laude in 1960. Her master's thesis was on stratification in women's occupations. As an undergraduate, she was a mentor to Princess, later Queen, Beatrix of the Netherlands. from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her study Volunteers in Welfare (1990) was an influential analysis of the resurgence of volunteering and the voluntary sector, and the tension between volunteering as a low-cost provision of social welfare and as a means of individual self-development for volunteers. In it, Baldock argues volunteer work represents the features of a capitalist state and the patriarchy, by fulfilling their economic and ideological functions and maintaining their status quo.

Publications

Baldassar, Loretta; Baldock, Cora Vellekoop and Wilding, Raelene, Families Caring Across Borders, Migration, Ageing and Transnational Caregiving, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, England, 2007. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop, 'Long-distance Migrants and Family Support', Health Sociology Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 2003, pp. 45–54. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop, Volunteers in Welfare, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, New South Wales, 1990. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop, Seniors as volunteers: an international perspective on policy, Ageing and Society, vol. 19, 1999, 581-602 pp. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop and Cass, Bettina, Women, Social Welfare and the State in Australia, 2nd edn, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, New South Wales, 1988. Baldock, Cora Vellekoop and Lally, Jim, Sociology in Australia and New Zealand: Theory and Methods, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, United States of America, 1974.