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My mother Elizabeth Lebas, who has died from cancer aged 67, was a teacher and researcher in the politics and philosophy of urban living. Her work focused on health, housing reform and urban policy in the 1920s-70s, a period that fascinated her because of its commitment to a collective future. She carried out original research on municipal film-making, and discovered, catalogued and rescued the extraordinary public information films – often found in local archives, unmarked in cardboard boxes – that progressive local governments, especially the Glasgow Corporation (now Glasgow city council), had made between 1920 and 1978.
She was born in France to Jean, a ship engineer, and his wife Fernande, but the family soon moved to Quebec, Canada, fleeing the hardships of postwar Europe. After completing a degree at Sir George William University in Montreal (now Concordia University), Elizabeth spent a year at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, Indiana University, as an assistant to the sociologists John Gagnon and William Simon. The experience ignited her passion for field research, and included a trip to Hugh Hefner's original Playboy Mansion in Chicago to watch films otherwise banned in the US.
In 1968, unable to register at university in Paris due to student protests, Elizabeth made her way to Britain, where she completed her master's in political science at the LSE under the tutelage of Ralph Miliband. She went on to translate Manuel Castells' book City, Class and Power (1978), a key text from the French school of urban Marxism. Soon afterwards she joined the Architectural Association, where she taught and undertook research.
She moved to Middlesex University as a senior lecturer, and later a reader, where was known as a serious teacher, expecting students to make the effort to engage with complex ideas and to develop their own arguments. In 2003 she edited, with Eleonore Kofman and Stuart Elden, a translation of key writings of the French urbanist Henri Lefebvre and wrote a valuable introductory essay on his work.
Sadness and Gladness, an exhibition featuring Elizabeth's work on the Glasgow films, opened at the Lighthouse, Scotland's national centre for design and architecture, in 2007. Two years later she was awarded a Graham Foundation grant to do further research on municipal use of film, and subsequently wrote the beautiful Forgotten Futures: British Municipal Cinema 1920-80 (2011). In 2012 she was involved in putting together an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, Here Comes Good Health, which focused on the health education policy of Bermondsey borough council, a pioneer of health reform.
Elizabeth had a beautiful smile and was known for her quick mind, quirky sense of humour and excellent cooking, as well as her love of garden history. She loved travel and the outdoor life, in particular swimming in the Hampstead Heath women's pond, cross-country skiing in Norway and visiting gardens in Japan and her native Canada.
She is survived by her children, my brother Samuel and me, from her marriage to Nigel Goldie, which ended in divorce, and her sisters Marianne and Liliane Lebas.
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