John Peter Scott (born 8 April 1949) is an English sociologist working on issues of economic and political sociology, social stratification, the history of sociology, and social network analysis. He is currently working independently, and has previously worked at the Universities of Strathclyde, Leicester, Essex, and Plymouth. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2007), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (elected 2005), and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (elected 2003). He has been a member of the British Sociological Association since 1970. In 2015 he became Chair of Section S4 of the British Academy. In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Essex University. Early life and education John Scott was born in Battersea, London, and spent most of his childhood in Feltham, Middlesex. He attended Cardinal Road Infant school, Hanworth Road Junior school and Hampton Grammar School. Following a repeat year to improve his A-level results he studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology at Kingston College of Technology (now Kingston University) from 1968 to 1971. He started a PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics under the supervision of John Westergaard and Percy Cohen. This work explored the relationships between the concepts of status and class, involving a detailed examination of the work of Talcott Parsons. After two years, Scott moved to Strathclyde University and completed his doctoral thesis in 1976. Career Scott was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, in 1972. Taking advantage of the Scottish location at a time of the North Sea oil boom and the debate over devolution, he began a project, with Michael Hughes, on the ownership and control of Scottish businesses and the involvement of economic elites in political power. An early paper from this project appeared in The Red Paper on Scotland, edited by future Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Scott was a member of the Quantitative Sociology Group of the British Sociological Association and, through this group, developed an interest in network analysis through contacts established with Barry Wellman, Joel Levine, Michael Schwartz, and Frans Stokman. Moving to Leicester University in 1976, Scott extended his research into an international comparative study of economic networks, working with Stokman and Rolf Ziegler on a project reported in Networks of Corporate Power. He formed the Social Networks Study Group of the British Sociological Association, jointly with J.