Trustees

Madeleine became the 9th President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University, on 1st October 2018.

Madeleine’s background includes reading Law and History as an undergraduate at Cambridge, teaching in a large comprehensive school in Huntingdon, and completing a Ph.D. and post-doctoral research contracts at the University of Nottingham.

Following various senior positions at Newcastle University, including Pro-Vice-Chancellor, she was Vice-Chancellor of Coventry University between 2004 and 2013. Madeleine then joined the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as its Chief Executive in January 2014, retaining that post until March 2018.

Catherine Barnard is a Professor of EU law and Employment Law and Senior Tutor and Fellow of Trinity College. 

She is the author of EU Employment Law (Oxford, OUP, 2012, 5th ed.), The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, (Oxford, OUP, 2019, 6th ed), and (with Peers ed), European Union Law (Oxford, OUP,  2017, 2nd ed) . She is a member of the European Commission funded European Labour Law Network (ELLN). She is also a Senior Fellow in the UK in a Changing Europe project. This is an authoritative, non-partisan think tank which undertakes research and provides information about all aspects of Brexit. Part of its remit is to make that information accessible to the general public. So it does a lot of public engagement, especially with the media.  Catherine has appeared on the main media channels - BBC, ITV and Sky - as well as some of the more specialist programmes such as Law in Action, Woman’s Hour, Question Time and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to numerous Select Committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit, immigration and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. She has her own podcast, 2903cb, and she blogs on Brexit, mainly for the UK in a Changing Europe project.

David Cardwell is Professor of Superconducting Engineering and Pro-Vice-Chancellor responsible for Strategy and Planning at the University of Cambridge. He was Head of the Engineering Department between 2014 and 2018.

Professor Cardwell, who established the Bulk Superconductor research group at Cambridge in 1992, has a world-wide reputation on the processing and applications of bulk high temperature superconductors. He was a founder member of the European Society for Apploed Superconductivity (ESAS) in 1998 and has served as a Board member and Treasurer of the Society for the past 12 years. He is an active board member of three international journals, including Superconductor Science and Technology, and has authored over 370 technical papers and patents in the field of bulk superconductivity since 1987. He has given invited presentations at over 70 international conferences and collaborates widely around the world with academic institutes and industry. Professor Cardwell was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 in recognition of his contribution to the development of superconducting materials for engineering applications.

He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He was awarded a Sc.D. by the University of Cambridge in 2014 and an honorary D.Sc. by the University of Warwick in 2015.

Ann Dowling is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and is also Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where she was Head of the Department of Engineering 2009-14 and ran the University Gas Turbine Partnership with Rolls-Royce 2001-14.  Professor Dowling’s research is on efficient, low emission combustion for aero and industrial gas turbines and low noise vehicles, especially aircraft and cars.

Ann read Mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, which was followed by a PhD in Engineering, also at Cambridge.  She was appointed as Research Fellow at Sidney Sussex College in 1977, where she continued as a Fellow after being appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Engineering in 1978.  She has held visiting posts at MIT (Jerome C Hunsaker Visiting Professor 1999-2000) and at Caltech (Gordon Moore Distinguished Scholar 2001-2002).

Ann is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering and is a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering and of the French Academy of Sciences.  She is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering Designers, and has honorary degrees from Oxford University, Imperial College London, Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast, the Universities of Leeds, Kent and Heriot-Watt, London South Bank University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Ann has served on a number of industry and government advisory committees.  She is a non-executive director of BP plc and chairs their Remuneration and Technical Advisory Committees.  She is also a non-executive member of the Board of the UK Government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).  She is a member of the Prime-Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and chaired the Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering Panel in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 - the UK Government’s review of research in universities.

Ann was appointed CBE by the Queen for services to Mechanical Engineering in 2002, and DBE for services to Science in 2007.

Professor Simon Franklin read Classical Greek and Russian at King’s College, Cambridge before moving to Oxford to undertake a doctorate in Medieval History.

After a year as a Junior Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Centre for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C., he came to Clare College, Cambridge as a Research Fellow.  In 1983, Simon was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Slavonic Studies, where his research has been mostly on the history and culture of medieval Eastern Europe ad Early Modern Russia, though he has also published on 19th and 20th century Russian literature.  Books include Writing, Society and Culture in Early Russia, c. 950-1200 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and National Identity in Russian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Simon was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012.  In Clare College, he has served as Tutor, Graduate Rooms Tutor, Director of Studies and Senior Tutor.  From 2009 to 2014, he was Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Outside Cambridge, Simon has been involved in several educational and cultural charities related principally to Russia.  He was Chair of the Pushkin House Trust when it established a centre for Russian culture in Bloomsbury Square, London, and he is a Trustee of the European University in the St. Petersburg.

Peter studied Mathematics at Merton College Oxford. After graduating with first class honours, Peter joined the consulting firm Bain & Company, where he spent seven years advising companies on business strategy, before moving on to corporate finance at the leading investment bank SG Warburg.

In 1993, Peter joined the British Broadcasting Corporation as Head of Corporate Planning. He became Finance Director of BBC News in 1997, before being appointed Chief Operating Officer of that division in 2001. In 2005, he became the BBC’s Director of Business Development, and was responsible for the sale of BBC Broadcast which became Red Bee Media.

In 2006, Peter moved to Ofcom, the UK’s media and communications regulator, where he was a member of the Board.  He was responsible for its approach to reshaping regulation in the light of digital developments, and led its work on the future of public service broadcasting, high-speed broadband, and illegal internet file sharing.

In 2010, Peter moved to Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest media organisation with a global reputation in its academic and educational fields, as Chief Operating Officer.  In 2012 he was appointed as the Press’s Chief Executive. In 2021, he became the Chief Executive of the newly formed Cambridge University Press & Assessment, bringing together the world-class skills and impact of Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press to form a global leader in education and research with 85% of its sales outside the UK and more than 6,000 people around the world.

Peter is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is a former President of the Publishers Association and is a member of its Council.  He has also been a trustee of the Nuffield Trust, the Crafts Council, Article 19 and the John Schofield Trust, an adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, Chairman of the Sabre Trust and a director of Parliamentary Broadcasting Limited.

Jaideep Prabhu has held positions at Cambridge, Imperial College London, Tilburg University (the Netherlands), and University of California, Los Angeles.  He has a BTech degree from IIT Delhi and a PhD from the University of Southern California.  He is currently Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise.

Jaideep’s research interests are in marketing, innovation, strategy and international business.  His current research is on how multinationals are using emerging markets in Asia, Latin America and Africa as labs in which to do affordable and sustainable innovation for global application.

He has published in and is on the editorial board of leading international journals such as the Journal of Marketing and the International Journal of Research in Marketing.  He has appeared on BBC News 24, BBC Radio 4 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and his work has been profiled in BusinessWeek, BBC World Service, The Economic Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, Le Monde, MIT Sloan Management Review, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The Times.

Jaideep is the co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, described by The Economist as “the most comprehensive book yet” on the subject of frugal innovation.

Michael Proctor grew up on a farm in Spalding, Lincolnshire.  He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and read Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge.

After Part III Mathematics, he spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Kennedy Scholar before returning to Cambridge to undertake research in cosmical magnetic fields.  He became a Research Fellow of Trinity College in 1974.  He then spent two years on the Faculty at MIT before returning to Cambridge as Assistant Lecturer and teaching Fellow of Trinity in 1977.  He was from 2000, until his retirement from the Chair, Professor of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics. 

From 2006-2012, Michael was Vice-Master of Trinity College.  He became Provost of King’s College in 2013.  His research is principally concerned with the generation of magnetic fields on the sun, and their interaction with solar convection.  He was elected to the Royal Society in 2006.  He is a Trustee of the Gladstone Memorial Trust, Governor of several secondary schools and from 2018-2022 was Chair of the Cambridge Trust board of Trustees.

Michael’s interests include gardening, rowing and blues and classical music.  He lives with his wife Julia, a retired GP, in Cambridge.  He has two children and two stepchildren.

Dr. Michael Rands, a conservation biologist, is the Master of Darwin College, Cambridge. He holds a BSc in Environmental Sciences from the University of East Anglia (1978) and a DPhil in Zoology from the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and Wolfson College, Oxford (1982).  He is a Fellow in Management Practice at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

Mike joined Darwin after serving as the Founding Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), which is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the internationally focused cluster of conservation organisations based around Cambridge. CCI was created to transform global biodiversity conservation through the better integration of research, policy, practice and learning. It has established a Centre of Conservation Excellence in Cambridge, based in the David Attenborough Building.

As a research ecologist, Mike studied farmland biodiversity in the UK and developed innovative methodologies for increasing wildlife populations in agricultural ecosystems, some of which became enshrined in UK and EU policy. In 1986 he moved into international conservation, directing a programme of multidisciplinary projects in over 100 countries for the International Council for Bird Preservation. From 1996 to 2009 he was the Chief Executive of BirdLife International, a global partnership of national conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats, and global biodiversity, working with communities towards sustainability in the use of natural resources.

Mike has served as a trustee or board member for organisations including the British Ornithologists Union, Conservation International (UK), Fauna & Flora International, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the National Trust, and the Ornithological Society of the Middle East.

Mike is broadly interested in interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to conserving the natural world and developing innovative solutions to global challenges, especially environmental sustainability.

Professor Nidhi Singal’s research interests include addressing educational inequity and improving the quality of teaching and learning processes for the poorest children in South Asia and Africa, with a particular focus on those with disabilities.  She has worked on various projects supported by international organisations, such as CBM, Handicap International, SightSavers and UNESCO.  Nidhi has published widely and serves on various editorial boards.  In 2008-09, she was the Assistant Editor for the International Journal of Educational Research.

Nidhi is also actively involved at Hughes Hall, having served as a Tutor for five years and as the Acting Vice President of the College in 2013.  She graduated with a Masters and a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge in 2004, having herself been a scholar of the (then) Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.  Before coming to Cambridge, Nidhi trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Delhi (India).