Jean Martin was a pioneer of sociology, inventing a version of the discipline that was uniquely suited to Australia in the post-war period.

Jean Isobel Martin (1923–79) made herself a sociologist before the discipline was established in Australia.

Regarded as the founding mother of Australian sociology, her writing, teaching and policy helped shape Australia in the period of economic growth and social development that followed World War II. The Martin Presence examines her work across the prevailing concerns of the time – the needs of country towns, the factory work floor, families and urban structure, poverty and inequality, education and immigration – and explores her farreaching influence on the study of social sciences in Australia.