Lisa Jardine

Jardine was Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London, where she was Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. She was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of King’s College and Jesus College, Cambridge. She was a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum for eight years, and was for five years a member of the Council of the Royal Institution in London. Jardine was Patron of the Archives and Records Association and the Orange Prize. From 2008–2014, she served as Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority – the UK government regulator for assisted reproduction and in December 2011 was appointed a Director of The National Archives. Jardine published more than 50 scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals and books, and 17 full-length books, both for an academic and for a general readership, a number of them in co-authorship with others. Her books included The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London, Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution and biographies of Robert Hooke, and Sir Christopher Wren (On a Grander Scale: the Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren). Her 2008 book Going Dutch, on Anglo-Dutch reciprocal influence in the 17th century, won the 2009 Cundill Prize in History at McGill University, the world’s premier history book prize. She wrote and reviewed widely for the media, and presented and appeared regularly on arts, history and current affairs programmes for TV and radio. She was a regular writer and presenter of A Point of View on BBC Radio 4 and she judged the Novel category of the 1996 Whitbread Book Awards, the 1999 Guardian First Book Award, the 2000 Orwell Prize and was Chair of Judges for the 1997 Orange Prize for Fiction.