A noted social anthropologist, Barbara E. Ward was a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and a one-time Reader in Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ward first went to Hong Kong in 1950 and lived here whenever she had the opportunity. At the time of her death in January 1983, she was preparing a book on the Boat People of Hong Kong, among whom she lived for several years. She wrote numerous articles on Chinese social and economic organizations, particularly in Hong Kong and she was the editor of Women in the New Asia (UNESCO 1964).