Professor Joan Bliss, Director of the University of Sussex Institute of Education (USIE) from 1996 to 2001, died on 16 May after a long illness.

Joan arrived at Sussex as Director of Education during a period of increasing difficulty in responding to the challenges of national policy and underlying structural issues in Education.

These were challenging times for Education in advance of a restructuring of the University in 2000-01 but Joan always brought warmth and humour to her work and strove to be consensual and collaborative.

Professor Fiona Leach and Dr Pat Drake, both subsequently Heads of Education, came to appreciate the tensions and anxieties inherent in the role, and admired Joan's quiet determination and commitment to the task.

Colleague Professor Keith Lewin notes: "She was supportive of the development of international work, having worked for a period in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)."

She continued to be supportive of the department's work with new teachers and teaching assistants, and for several years after she retired came to teach students about the work of developmental child psychologist Jean Piaget, with whom she had worked in Geneva earlier in her career. She fervently believed that Piaget's important work needed to be clearly understood by new generations of teachers. 

Joan brought a strong psychological perspective to our research students, which enhanced our scope and range. 

She had spent time as a broadcaster, when she was the central educator for a series of school television programmes, based on Piaget's relevance to mathematics in primary schools. 

Despite her increasing frailty, Joan was a regular figure seen determinedly climbing the stairs in Arts E (where there was no lift) to her teaching room, stick in one hand and bags of papers in the other. 

She put a huge amount of effort into all her work, and contributed several important books and chapters while still dealing with the considerable issues of Education. 

Joan remained a Research Professor at Sussex until she fully retired in 2005. 

Sadly her health deteriorated in 2008 and she spent the last three years of her life battling an auto-immune attack on the nerve cells in the cerebellum, which left her with symptoms similar to a major stroke.   All the time her mind remained as keen as ever, even though the world constantly swayed before her eyes and she was confined to a chair.

Her work will be remembered for some time. She is survived by her husband, Jon Ogborn; three step children; and her sister.

Gillian Carrell, Pat Drake, Michael Eraut, Fiona Leach and Keith Lewin, Department of Education 

To read an obituary of Joan written by her husband, Jon Ogborn, go to the Guardian's website. 

King's College London, where Joan worked before joining Sussex, have also published an obituary on their website.