Visiting Fellows (2019 - 2023)

The nine new Visiting Fellows to Lady Margaret Hall (2019-23) are people drawn from a variety of backgrounds, callings and professions. They will form a bridge between our own academic community and the worlds they inhabit and represent.

Kwame Kwei-Armah (OBE) is a British actor, playwright, director, singer and broadcaster. He recently curated BBC 4’s ‘Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle' TV series. In 2011 he became Artistic Director of the Baltimore Center Stage Theatre and in 2018 became the Artistic Director of the Young Vic in London. Kwame was Artistic Director for the World Black Arts Festival, Senegal, in 2010. He was an Associate Director of the Donmar Warehouse and has served on the boards of the National Theatre, Tricycle Theatre, and Theatre Communications Group. Kwame was the Chancellor of the University of the Arts London from 2010 to 2015, and in 2012 was awarded an OBE for Services to Drama. (Photo: Leon Puplett)

Fascinated by the cello’s origins and the creative process of new music, Elinor Frey plays both period and modern instruments. Central to Elinor’s musical life is her constant search for projects that change her ideas about what it is to play the cello and how it can sound. She is most inspired by music that is rarely heard and then performing, recording, and publishing it. Her recent commissions of new works for the five string-cello and Baroque cello culminated in the release of Guided By Voices on the Analekta label in March 2019. Elinor’s CDs on the Belgian label Passacaille includes Fiorè (2017), which features soprano Suzie LeBlanc, Berlin Sonatas (2015) with Lorenzo Ghielmi on fortepiano, and La voce del violoncello (2013), a project that grew out of her Fulbright Fellowship in Italy. A first recording of the cello sonatas of Giuseppe Dall’Abaco will be out in November 2019. Elinor has performed throughout the Americas and Europe and is currently artist-in-residence at Montréal’s Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur. She holds degrees from McGill, Mannes, and Juilliard. (Photo: Elizabeth Delage)

Keeley Foster joined the fire service in 2002 after working in creative industries. She was drawn to the London Fire Brigade due to the wide-ranging role, physical fitness and the team work it offered. Her first job in the service was at Millwall Fire Station. She is Deputy Assistant Commissioner at London Fire Brigade, Head of Cultural Change & Talent Management. In a recent article she wrote: "I see myself as a role model who can encourage all women that nothing is out of their reach. Just because we want more female firefighters does not mean we’re lowering our standards or preventing men from joining. Myths like these need busting. We want to broaden the net as wide as possible; accepting difference and diversity at all levels will make us a better fire service and better reflect the city we serve." (Photo courtesy of Keeley Foster)

One of the most distinctive artists of his generation, Stephen Hough (CBE) combines a distinguished career as a pianist with those of composer and writer. Named by The Economist as one of Twenty Living Polymaths, Hough was the first classical performer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Since taking first prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition in New York, Stephen has performed with many of the world’s major orchestras and has given recitals at the most prestigious concert halls. He is a regular guest at festivals such as Salzburg, La Roque- d'Anthéron, Mostly Mozart, Edinburgh, and BBC Proms, where he has made more than twenty concerto appearances. (Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke)

In January 2004, Brenda Hale (DBE,PC, LLD, FBA) became the UK's first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer, and judge. She taught law at Manchester University and qualified as a barrister. In 1984 she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission. Important legislation resulting from the work of her team at the Commission includes the Children Act 1989, the Family Law Act 1996, and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. In 1994 she became a High Court judge and in 1999 she was the second woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, before becoming the first woman Law Lord. She transferred with the other Law Lords to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom when it was created in 2009 and became its Deputy President in 2013 and its President in 2017. (Photo courtesy of Baroness Hale)

Gary Lineker (OBE) is an English former professional footballer and current sports broadcaster. He holds England's record for goals in the FIFA World Cup finals, with 10 scored. Gary's media career began with the BBC, where he has presented the flagship football programme Match of the Day since the late 1990s. Gary began his football career at Leicester City in 1978 and then moved to Everton where he scored 30 goals in 41 games. He then joined Barcelona, where he won the Copa del Rey in 1988 and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1989. In 1989, joined Tottenham Hotspur. Gary’s final club was Nagoya Grampus Eight. He retired in 1994 after two seasons at the Japanese side. Gary made his England debut in 1984, earning 80 caps and scoring 48 goals over an eight-year international career. He is regarded as one of the all-time best English strikers. (Photo: Stills Press/ Alamy Stock Photo)

Kamila Shamsie is the author of seven novels, which have been translated into over 20 languages. Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and long listed for the Man Booker Prize; Burnt Shadows was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the Premio Boccaccio (Italy);  A God in Every Stone was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (India), and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award (USA). Three of her other novels (In the City by the Sea, Kartography, Broken Verses) have received awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, she grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London. (Photo: Zain Mustafa)

James is an environmental lawyer, social entrepreneur and writer. He is the founding CEO of ClientEarth - Europe's first public interest environmental law organisation.  Now operating globally, it uses advocacy, litigation and research to address the greatest challenges of our time – including nature loss, climate change, and toxic chemicals. The New Statesman has named him as one of 10 people who could change the world. The Lawyer has picked him as one of the top 100 lawyers in the UK and the Financial Times awarded him its Special Achievement accolade at the FT 2016 Innovative Lawyers Awards. James is also Professor of Law at the University of Bristol (Hons), a poet, and a Zen Buddhist priest. (Photo courtesy of James Thornton)

I am honoured to be appointed as a Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. I look forward to making my contribution to debate at the college, and to much enriching engagement with tutors, staff, students and other fellows https://t.co/h9r2w25bRF @lmhoxford

— JamesT ClientEarth (@JamesThorntonCE) July 24, 2019