Our History Alumni are working for diverse institutions and businesses across the world.
The career routes for Alumni after a programme within our History Department are highly varied. Our Alumni range from novelists to archivists, historic building advisers to academics.
Jessica Lee (1976-)
BA Modern History, Economic History and Politics, 1997 Royal Holloway
Jessica was elected Conservative MP for the constituency of Erewash in Derbyshire in 2010. She served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, before stepping down at the 2015 general election.
She joined the Conservative Party in Nottingham when she was 15 and campaigned in numerous elections in the East Midlands and London.
She was previously a barrister at Gray's Inn, specialising in assisting families in crisis.
She has served on the Conservative Party's Social Justice Policy Group, examining how the voluntary sector can assist in the area of family breakdown across the UK.
Dr Simon Thurley CBE (1962-)
BA History, 1985 Bedford College and Honorary Fellow
Simon is a leading architectural historian. He was previously Chief Executive of English Heritage, the UK Government’s independent advisor on the historic environment.
Prior to this he was Director of the Museum of London from 1998-2002 and Curator, Surveyor of the Fabric and Main Board Member of Historic Royal Palaces.
He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. He is also Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway.
Janice Hadlow (1957-)
History postgraduate, 1981 Royal Holloway College and Honorary Fellow
Janice was Controller of BBC2 from 2008 to 2014 where her many hits included Miranda, Rev, Gareth Malone's Military Wives, Stargazing Live with Brian Cox and the Great British Bake Off.
She was previously Controller of BBC4 and Head of Specialist Factual at Channel 4, where she commissioned highly successful and award-winning programmes including David Starkey's Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and The 1940s House.
Professor Patrick Collinson CBE FBA (1929-2011)
PhD History, 1954 Royal Holloway College
As Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, Patrick Collinson was a leading scholar of the English reformation. He was always guided by a radical conscience and his Christian socialism.
Patrick began his lecturing career at the University of Khartoum and in 1961 became Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at King's College, London.
He moved on to professorships at the University of Sydney, the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Sheffield, before coming back to Cambridge, his alma-mater, in 1988.
Patrick was a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His books include The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559-1625 (1982) and The Reformation (2003).
