The University of Cambridge is composed of 31 colleges in addition to the academic departments and administration of the central university. Until the mid-19th century, both Cambridge and Oxford comprised a group of colleges with a small central university administration, rather than universities in the common sense. Cambridge's colleges are communities of students, academics and staff – an environment in which generations and academic disciplines are able to mix, with both students and fellows experiencing "the breadth and excellence of a top University at an intimate level".
Fiona Margaret Mactaggart is a British politician and former primary school teacher who has been chair of the Fawcett Society since 2018. A member of the Labour Party, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Slough from 1997 to 2017.
Helena Ann Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws,, is a Scottish barrister, broadcaster, and Labour member of the House of Lords. She was Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, from 2011 to 2018. A Bencher of Gray's Inn, an Honorary Writer to the Signet and the recipient of 42 Honorary Degrees from many universities including those of Glasgow and Edinburgh in recognition of work on women and the law and on widening participation in higher education. She is President of Justice, the law reform think tank, and is also director of the International Bar Association's Institute of Human Rights.
Onora Sylvia O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, is a British philosopher and a crossbench member of the House of Lords.
Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd, was a British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1957.
Murray Edwards College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1954 as New Hall and renamed in 2008. The name honours a gift of £30 million by alumna Ros Edwards and her husband Steve, and the first President and woman Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Rosemary Murray.
Brenda Marjorie Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond,, is a British judge who served as President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2017 until her retirement in 2020.
Dame Linda Jane Colley, is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is currently Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a long-term fellow in history at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She previously held chairs at Yale University and at the London School of Economics. Her work frequently approaches the past from inter-disciplinary perspectives.
Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright was a British mathematician. She was one of the pioneers of what would later become known as chaos theory. Along with J. E. Littlewood, Cartwright saw many solutions to a problem which would later be seen as an example of the butterfly effect.
Emily Maitlis is a British journalist and former newsreader for the BBC. She was the lead anchor of the BBC Two news and current affairs programme Newsnight until the end of 2021, and is currently a presenter of the daily podcast The News Agents on LBC Radio.
Keith Anderson Hope Murray, Baron Murray of Newhaven, KCB was a British academic and Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.
Jean Duthie Beggs CBE FRS FRSE DSc is a Scottish geneticist. She is the Royal Society Darwin Trust Professor in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh.
Jennifer Chase Barnes is a musicologist and former university administrator. She was a Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in the University of Cambridge, and the 4th President of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge’ in the United Kingdom.
Ana Pastor García is a Spanish journalist.
Julia Mary Howard Smith, is an American medievalist who is the Chichele Professor of Medieval History at All Souls College, Oxford. She was formerly Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow.
Sarah Corp was a British television producer who worked for ITN's Channel 4 News. She specialised in foreign affairs.
Dorothy Tarrant (1885–1973) was a British classical scholar, specialising in Plato. She was the first female Professor of Greek in the United Kingdom, teaching at Bedford College, London from 1909 to 1950. She researched the work of Plato, pioneering the use of stylistic analysis to conclude that he had not written all the work previously attributed to him. She was active in the Classical Association and became its first woman president in 1958. She was also an active Unitarian and campaigned especially against alcohol, becoming the president of the Unitarian Temperance Association, the Unitarian Assembly and the Unitarian College.
April Mary Scott McMahon is a British academic administrator and linguist, who is Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Students at the University of Manchester.
Dorothy A. McMillan was a British literary scholar. An expert on Scottish women's writing, McMillan edited several anthologies, as well as editions of work by George Douglas Brown, Jane Austen, Mary Somerville, Robert Browning and Susan Ferrier. She taught for nearly 40 years at Glasgow University, where she became Senior Lecturer and later Honorary Research Fellow in English Literature.
