Graduating twins say: ‘For she’s a jolly good Fellow …’

A Professor of History at the University of Warwick is one of only 38 academics to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy at its Annual General Meeting on 21 July. Professor Carolyn Steedman is the latest scholar to join the prestigious Academy which is the UK's national body for the promotion of the humanities and social sciences and joins the existing 900 Fellows, including Marina Warner, Seamus Heaney, Eric Hobsbawm and Lord Bragg. Professor Steedman was delighted with the honour although she was unable to attend the awards dinner itself because of her commitments at graduation day at the University of Warwick where one of her students was receiving his PhD in History. Talvin Gill, whose thesis examined the social and political history of the Indian Workers' Association from 1930 to the 1990s, graduated alongside his twin brother, Jag, who was awarded a PhD in Comparative Literature. She said: "I would have loved to have been at the Academy's award dinner for what would have been a tremendous occasion. It was a difficult choice to make but I felt I must stay here to see my student, Tal Gill, whose doctorate I supervised, receive his PhD." Carolyn joined the University in 1984 and lives locally in Leamington Spa. She is a graduate of the University of Sussex and obtained her PhD from Cambridge in 1989.