Emeritus, Honorary and Foundation Fellows

Dame Judith Parker DBE QC is a former High Court judge.

She was called to the Bar in 1973, took Silk in 1991 and was elected a Bencher in 2000. She was appointed an Assistant Recorder in 1998, a Deputy High Court Judge in 1999, a Recorder in 2000 and a Judge of the High Court (Family Division) in 2008. She was a Family Division Liaison Judge from 2011 to 2016 and a Judicial Role Model from 2016 to 2019.

Dr Alice Prochaska is a historian. She was Principal of Somerville from 2010 to 2017 and a Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 2015 to 2017.

An alumna of Somerville , she holds both her BA and DPhil in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Her career has spanned museums, archives and libraries, working both in national organisations (the UK National Archives and the British Library) as well as universities on both sides of the Atlantic (University of London, Yale and now Oxford). Dr Prochaska is a Fellow and one-time Vice President of the Royal Historical Society. She has managed large staffs of scholars, librarians and archivists, and has chaired national and international boards and committees dealing with archives and scholarly resources. She is currently chair of the Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust and the Institute of Historical Research Trust, a commissioner of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, member of the General Federation of Trade Unions Education Trust, and an adviser to the OP Jindal Global University and other organisations in India. During her tenure as Principal of Somerville, she was instrumental in establishing the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust, and in securing additions to student accommodation in the College. Her current scholarly interest focuses on the history of cultural restitution, and the relationship between national heritage and national identity, with a special interest in the period of the Second World War.

Find out more about Alice Prochaska here.

Professor Pulman’s research interests are in computational linguistics: the development of computer programs that behave as if they understood English. He is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, and is currently a senior researcher at Apple, working on Siri.

Nicola Ralston served as the Head of Global Investment Consulting of Hewitt Associates Inc., from October 2004 to 2006.

Ms. Ralston served as the Head of Global Investment at Schroders. Ms. Ralston oversaw an eight-fold increase in assets under management at Schroders, retired from Schroders in 2001 to spend more time with her family. She remained active in the fund management industry, becoming Chairman of the UK Society of Investment Professionals, the investment management industry’s professional body, from 2002 to 2003. She spent 22 years with Schroders, rising to be Head of investment management in 1999. In the role she had overall responsibility for Schroders’ investment resources worldwide. Ms. Ralston started her financial career in 1977 moving to Schroders in 1979. She has been Chairman of Henderson Eurotrust Plc since March 26, 2014 and also has been its Director since September 1, 2013. She serves as an Executive Director of Liability Solutions. She served as an Executive Manager of Schroders Plc. She serves as a Director of Schroder Emerging Market Debt Opportunity Fund Ltd., and Schroder Japanese Long Short Fund Ltd. She served as a Director of The Edinburgh Investment Trust Plc from September 29, 2003 to July 19, 2013. She served as a Director of Director of Schroder Credit Renaissance Fund Ltd., of Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. Ms. Ralston is a Business Adviser to CSTIM and a director on several hedge funds and a governor of the CFA Institute.

Dame Esther Rantzen DBE CBE is a celebrated broadcaster and campaigner.

Dame Esther has appeared in more than 2,000 TV programmes including documentaries, talk shows, reality shows and quizzes as well as writing columns for The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail, in addition to 5 books.

In 1986 Dame Esther launched Childline, the free confidential helpline for children and young people, which she chaired for nineteen years. The charity has now helped more than 4 million children and young people, both online and via the telephone. The Childline model has now been successfully copied in 150 countries around the world.

In 2012, Dame Esther launched a new confidential helpline for older people, The Silver Line Helpline, which provides information, friendship and advice 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The biggest single problem older people disclose is loneliness. Nationally launched in November 2013, it receives around 10,000 calls a week. Independently evaluated by the Centre for Social Justice in a Report entitled “When I get off the phone I feel like I belong to the human race” (a quote from a caller), and also by Anglia Ruskin University, it was found to target successfully the loneliest older people. Beside the Helpline, trained volunteers, The Silver Line Friends, provide a matched befriending service, and Silver Circles. She is Founder/President, and a Trustee of the charity, which merged with Age UK in December 2019.

After graduating from Somerville with an MA in English, she joined the BBC, first as a sound effects assistant, then a researcher. While training to be a producer/director in 1968, she became a researcher and reporter for Bernard Braden’s consumer programme “Braden’s Week”. When Braden returned to Canada in 1973, she became producer and presenter of its successor, “That’s Life!”. The show ran for 21 years and at its peak drew an audience of 22.5 million. It achieved fame for its talking dogs, Jobsworth Awards and campaigns on behalf of abused children, organ transplants, safe playgrounds, and to provide justice for consumers. Its most viewed episode featured Sir Nicholas Winton being introduced for the first time to the survivors he had saved from the Holocaust including Lord Alfred Dubs. She continues to appear on TV, and regularly contributes to “The One Show”, political and news programmes on many different topics especially those relating to broadcasting, growing old ungracefully, and to the abuse of children and older people.

A creative producer as well as a presenter, she invented the documentary series “The Big Time” which discovered Sheena Easton, created the “Children of Courage” segment of “Children in Need” and invented “Hearts of Gold” which ran for seven years, honouring unsung heroes and heroines.

In addition to being the first woman to receive the Dimbleby Award from BAFTA she has also received the Royal Television Society’s Special Judges Award for Journalism, the Snowdon Award for services to disabled people,  6 honorary doctorates, an honorary Fellowship from Somerville College, Oxford and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Film and Television.

She received an OBE for Services to Broadcasting in 1991, in 2006 a CBE for Services to Children, and became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire  in 2015 for her work for children and older people, through Childline and The Silver Line.

Dr Peggie Rimmer went from being the first person in her family to study at university to one of the leading voices of CERN’s computing revolution, heading a team including Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

Born and raised in Liverpool, Dr Rimmer also began her academic career there. She gained the top degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Liverpool, followed by a first class Honours degree in physics. In 1961, she came to Oxford, matriculated at Lady Margaret Hall, and obtained a DPhil in nuclear physics. She then spent two years as a Junior Research Fellow at Somerville. In 1967, Dr Rimmer took up a two-year Fellowship at CERN and, relishing the company of 10,000 particle physicists, based her career there.

During her time at CERN, a fascination with the new computing equipment then emerging led Dr Rimmer to specialise in software for data acquisition and networking. Specifically, she led the group tasked with enabling standardised data collection for the multiple complex experiments being undertaken across the anarchic jumble of mini-computers, operating systems and programming languages then in use. In 1984, Tim Berners-Lee joined this team, conducting work that directly informed his Web prototype. Dr Rimmer subsequently led the CERN public relations group. Her last role prior to retirement was as Scientific Secretary to the Research Review Board.

In addition to her distinguished career, Dr Rimmer is a long-standing advocate for widening access to higher education. In 2012, she established the Peggie Rimmer Bursary for Women in Science at Somerville to enable more women to excel in STEM subjects. In 2023, she expanded this support through the Dr Peggie Rimmer Sanctuary Fund. This will transform the College’s ability to support its Sanctuary Scholars, providing those who have been displaced due to conflict, persecution or other serious human rights violations with a pathway to Oxford and support once they’re here.

Read more about Dr Peggie Rimmer’s career

Read more about the Dr Peggie Rimmer Sanctuary Fund

In 2015, Sacha Romanovitch became the first woman to head a major UK accounting house at Grant Thornton.

In her current role as CEO of Fair4All Finance Sacha Romanovitch (1986, MA Chemistry) helps to maintain the lifeline of affordable credit for families and small businesses. In 2018, she was elected Honorary Fellow of Somerville and awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of York. In 2020, Romanovitch was made OBE in recognition of her distinguished career and public service. Since February 2022, she has sat on the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council.