Prof. Gillian Beer

I studied for the BA and BLitt at St Anne’s College, Oxford and was then appointed as Assistant Lecturer at Bedford College, University of London followed by two years at the University of Liverpool. In 1965 I was elected to a Research Fellowship at Girton College Cambridge and remained there as a teaching Fellow for twenty nine years before being elected as President at Clare Hall College in 1994, the same year that I became King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty, having previously served as Grace I Professor. After my retirement from Cambridge I was invited to become Senior Research Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art and spent time there annually for five years.

I am a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Overseas Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. I have twice served as a Man Booker Prize judge, the second time as Chair, and also of the Women’s Prize. Eleven universities have awarded me Honorary Doctorates: London, Liverpool, Harvard, the Sorbonne, St Andrews, Leicester, Oxford, Queens Belfast, Chichester, Anglia Ruskin and Ghent. When in 1998 I was made a Dame, the announcement cited my contribution to English literature.