People

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ann Oakley is a writer and a sociologist.

She has written both novels and many non-fiction books. Most of her life has been spent working in university research. She is best known for her work on sex and gender, housework, childbirth and feminist social science. Her more recent interests have focused on evidence-based public policy and methodologies of research and evaluation, on the sociology of the body and on biography and autobiography as forms of life-writing.

She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the UCL Institute of Education, and until January 2005 was Director of the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) at the Institute, where she also headed the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre). She holds an honorary appointment as a Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. In 2011 the British Sociological Association gave her one of their first Lifetime achievement Awards for her extraordinary contribution to the history of the development of sociology in Britain. She now works on research part-time, and spends the rest of it writing, wondering what to do about her archives, developing environmentally friendly cleaning products, and spending time with her grandchildren.

Onora Sylvia O’Neill, Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve CH CBE FBA is a philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords.

The daughter of Sir Con Douglas Walter O’Neill, she was educated partly in Germany and at St Paul’s Girls’ School, London before studying philosophy, psychology and physiology at Oxford University. She went on to complete a doctorate at Harvard University, with John Rawls as supervisor. During the 1970s she taught at Barnard College, the women’s college in Columbia University, New York. In 1977 she returned to Britain and took up a post at the University of Essex; she was Professor of Philosophy there when she became Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge in 1992.

She is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, a former President of the British Academy 1988-1989 and chaired the Nuffield Foundation 1998-2010. In 2003, she was the founding President of the British Philosophical Association (BPA). Until October 2006, she was the Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and she currently chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Michele Moody-Adams is currently Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011.

Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as an Associate Dean. 

She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy. Her current work includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, and democratic disagreement. Her next book, coming out in late 2021, is entitled Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope.  She is also working on a project entitled Renewing Democracy and a book on the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Moody-Adams has a B.A. from Wellesley College, a second B.A. from Oxford University, and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. She has been a British Marshall Scholar and an NEH Fellow.

Harriet Maunsell is non-executive director at the Pension Insurance Corporation.

Formerly, she was Chairman of the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority and non-executive director of the Serious Fraud Office. In 1994 she was awarded the OBE for services to pensions.

Dame Rosalind Marsden was the EU Special Representative for Sudan from September 2010 until October 2013.

Before joining the EU, she had a long career in the British diplomatic service, including postings as Consul-General in Basra, British Ambassador to Sudan and British Ambassador to Afghanistan. She has also served as Head of the United Nations Department and Director (Asia-Pacific) in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Earlier in her career she served twice in the British Embassy in Tokyo and spent two years on secondment to the private sector, working in the corporate finance department of an investment bank.

She received her BA in Modern History from Somerville College, Oxford and her D.Phil from St Antony’s College, Oxford. – See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/dame-rosalind-marsden#sthash.ElSiYjHJ.dpuf

Anna Laura Lepschy is Emeritus Professor in Italian at University College London.

After studying at Somerville, she began a career in academia. In 1977 she co-published The Italian Language Today with her husband Giulio Lepschy, a reference book of the structure and grammar of contemporary Italian. She later co-edited a collection of essays titled Book Production and Letters in the Western European Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Conor Fahy.

In 1984, Lepschy was appointed a Head of the Italian Department at the University College London and founded the Centre for Italian Studies. While teaching, Lepschy co-edited a book with Verina R. Jones titled With a Pen in Her Hand: Women and Writing in Italy in the Nineteenth Century and beyond. The book was a collection of essays delivered at the Conference on Women and Writing in Nineteenth-Century Italy in February 1997. In 2002, Lepschy co-edited another book titled Multilingualism in Italy, Past and Present with Arturo Tosi.

Lepshy was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the Order of the Star of the Italian Solidarity and, in 2011, the British Academy’s Serena Medal for in recognition of her work.

In February 2003, H.E. Judge Kuenyehia was nominated by the Government of Ghana and elected as judge of the International Criminal Court. She currently serves as President of the Appeals Division.

From March 2007 until March 2009, she was the Presiding Judge of Pre-Trial Chamber 1. In March 2003, after the inauguration of the judges of the ICC, she was elected First Vice-President and was a judge in the Pre-Trial Division. H.E. Judge Kuenyehia was born in Akropong, Akuapem in Ghana and obtained her first degree from the Faculty of Law, university of Ghana, Legon. She then attended Somerville College, Oxford University, where she obtained a BCL, and shortly thereafter became the first female to be appointed as a law professor at the University of Ghana. While at the university, she taught criminal law, gender and the law, international human rights law and public international law.

She is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Ghana and has extensive experience as a solicitor, advocate, and law teacher. Judge Kuenyehia was Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana for seven years before her election to the ICC. Outside of the University, Judge Kuenyehia was among other things, a member of the UN Expert Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a member of the Council of Cape Coast University and the Board of Directors of Barclays Bank, Ghana Limited. She has been a pioneer advocating for equal opportunity, justice and development for women in Ghana and around the world. She is co-author of a text book on Women and Law in Sub-Saharan Africa, published in August 2003, which is currently the only comprehensive text book on the subject.

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, DBE, is an English soprano and one of the world’s most renowned early music specialists.

She has sung on over 100 recordings. Kirkby was a founding member of the Taverner Choir, and in 1973 began her long association with the Consort of Musicke. She took part in the early Decca Florilegium recordings with both the Consort of Musicke and the Academy of Ancient Music, at a time when most college-trained sopranos were not developing a vocal sound appropriate for early music.

She taught for many years at Dartington International Summer School, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, as well as the Bel Canto Summer School. In 2010 she became President of Dartington Community Choir. In 1994, she was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from the University of Bath. On 21 January 2011 it was announced that Kirkby had been awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music, an award funded by the Privy Purse and given to an individual who has had a major influence on the musical life of the nation.

Margaret read modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford, then took up a teaching post at Cheadle Hulme School. After nine years at CHS, Margaret moved to Withington Girls’ School, where she became Headmistress in 1986.

Margaret was appointed North West Chairman of the Girls’ Schools Association for three years, and National President in 1994, when the annual conference was for the first time, at her insistence, held in Manchester.

Margaret was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester in 1998. Her other local appointments have included membership of the Granada Foundation since 1986, the Court of the University of Manchester from 1991 to 2004, and Trusteeship of the Museum of Science and Industry from 1998 to 2004.

In retirement, she has been a governor of Bolton School and Cheadle Hulme School since 2001, and Chair of the Manchester University Press Board since 2000.

Dame Mary Keegan was born in 1953 and educated at Brentwood County High School and Somerville College, Oxford.

She was with Price Waterhouse (later PwC) from 1977 until 2001, occupying a number of senior roles during that time. She was a founder member of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Interpretations Committee and of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group Board.

In 1997 she was appointed the UK member of both the council and the executive of FEE (Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens) and she was also a founding member of the International Forum on Accountancy Development. She was also a member of the UK’s Urgent Issues Task Force.

She chaired the UK’s Accounting Standards Board from 2001 until her move to Whitehall in 2004.

In 2007 she was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her hugely significant and lasting contribution to both HM Treasury itself and to the wider government agenda in financial management, government accounting and public spending. In 2014, she was given the accountancy profession’s most prestigious award – the ‘Award for Outstanding Achievement’ from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

She has been a keen rower, sailor, gardener and musician, and has since 2008 been involved in a non-executive capacity in the National Audit Office, the Royal Horticultural Society, Falmouth University and the Business School at Exeter University.

Margaret Ann Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington PC, is a Labour party peer and former Leader of the House of Lords.

Margaret’s father was former Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, and she was educated at Blackheath High School and Somerville College, Oxford.

Between 1965 and 1977 she held production posts within the BBC working on current affairs and further education television programmes. She then became a journalist on the BBC’s prestigious Panarama programme, and Thames Television’s This Week. She went on to present the BBC2 series Social History of Medicine, as well as being a contributor to Newsnight, Any Questions, Question Time and other current affairs programmes. She has a strong interest in health issues, notably as a campaigner on HIV and Aids. She was a founder director of the National Aids Trust in 1987. She is also a patron of Help the Aged.

She was appointed a life peer in 1992 with the title of Baroness Jay of Paddington, of Paddington in the City of Westminster, and acted as an opposition Whip in the House of Lords. In association with the shop workers’ union, she led opposition to the liberalisation of Sunday trading hours.

After her party’s election victory in 1997, she became Health Spokesman and Minister for Women in the House of Lords. From 1998 she was Leader of the House of Lords, playing a pivotal role in the major reform that led to the removal of most of its hereditary members. She retired from active politics in 2001.

Among numerous non-executive roles that she has taken on since retiring from politics, she was a non-executive director of BT Group. She is currently co-chair of the cross-party Iraq Commission (along with Tom King and Paddy Ashdown) which was established by the Foreign Policy Centre think-tank and Channel 4.

Carole Hillenbrand was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh. She was appointed Professor of Islamic History in 2000 and served as Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, from 1997-2002 and from 2006-2008.

She has been Professor Emerita of Islamic History at Edinburgh since 2008. She was awarded an OBE for services to Higher Education in 2009. She was Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA in 1994 and 2005, at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands in 2002, and Visiting Professor at the University of St Louis, USA, 2011 and 2013.

In 2005 she was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, 2005 (the first non-Muslim to be awarded this prize). In 2015, she was given the British Society for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Award for Services to Middle Eastern Studies. In 2016 she was awarded the British Academy/ Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.

She has been Islamic Advisory Editor at Edinburgh University Press since 1983 and Editor of the series entitled “Studies in Persian and Turkish History”, published by Routledge since 1999.

Her research interests include the Crusades, the Seljuqs of Iran and Turkey, and medieval Muslim political thought, especially the work of al-Ghazali.

Dame Julia Stretton Higgins, DBE, FRS, FREng is Professor of Polymer Science in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology at Imperial College London.

Higgins was the former chair (1998–2003) of the Athena Project, which aims for the advancement of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) in Higher Education. She is now the Patron of the Athena Swan Awards Scheme. Between 2003 and 2007, she was chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Higgins was president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers 2002–3, and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 2003–4. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and was its Foreign Secretary 2001–6. She was Chair of the Royal Society’s State of the Nation Report Steering Group. Most recently she chaired Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME). (2008-2012) She currently Chairs the Royal Society project (funded by BIS) on increasing diversity in the scientific workforce

She is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the City and Guilds of London Institute, of which she is also Vice-President. She is also an honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Somerville College, Oxford. She was awarded a CBE in 1996 before being named a dame in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.She holds honorary degrees from a number of UK Universities ans also from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Her scientific work has concentrated on the investigation of polymers with neutron scattering. She co-authored a monograph on that field (Higgins & Benoit 1997). In 1999, she was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States. She was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001. She is a Chevalier de la Legion D’Honneur

Jenny Pickworth is a protein crystallographer who worked in Dorothy Hodgkin’s lab, where her work on the hexacarboxylic acid derivative of vitamin B12 revealed the structure of the corrin ring. 

At the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia where she was first a member of Lindo Patterson’s lab and later a principal investigator, she continued her interest in B12 structures.  Her research focus has included small-molecule structures related to cancer; the structural aspects of the Krebs cycle and citrates; metal-ion coordination in proteins; the interaction of ligands with metal ions; and the enzymes aconitase and xylose isomerase.  She is the recipient of many awards, notably the Fankuchen Award of the ACA and the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society.  Her many professional contributions include serving as President of the ACA in 1979 and as editor of Acta Crystallographica D (macromolecules).

One of Dr. Glusker’s major interests is crystallography education; the 3rd edition of the popular textbook Crystal Structure Analysis: A Primer by Glusker & Trueblood appeared in 2010.  She is the co-author or co-editor of a number of books on crystallography and the history of crystallography.

Biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist Victoria Glendinning was born in Sheffield, England on 23 April 1937.

She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Modern Languages, and worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974. Victoria Glendinning is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and was awarded a CBE in 1998. She is a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, Ulster, Dublin and York. She is also a regular contributor of articles and reviews to various newspapers and magazines.

Her acclaimed biographies include Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, published in 1977; Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (1981), which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) and the Duff Cooper Prize; and Rebecca West: A Life (1987). Both Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (1983) andTrollope (1992) won the Whitbread Biography Award. Her latest biography is Raffles and the Golden Opportunity (2012) on the life of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. 

Victoria Glendinning is the author of three novels: The Grown-Ups (1989), the story of Leo Ulm, author, pundit and academic; Electricity (1995), the story of a Victorian girl embroiled in new experiences and a new technology; and Flight (2002), a novel of passion and betrayal set in the world of international business.

In 2009, Love’s Civil War, the co-edited letters and diaries of Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, was published.

Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal.

She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College Oxford. She has three daughters and five grandchildren and lives in Old Bletchley, southern England, with her husband of over 50 years. There she runs her small publishing business, Callender Press, founded to publish her parents’ writing, and in great happiness continues her research and writing, including her dream-led venture into novels and filmscripts –   unexpected but somehow informed by her anthropology. Her series Hearing Others’ Voices is published by Balestier Press.