Vice-Chancellor's Circle event

Host and moderator

The Rt Hon Lord Smith

Chancellor, University of Cambridge

Lord Smith was elected as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in July 2025. Lord Smith was the Master of Pembroke from 2015 and is a former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and later Chairman of the Environment Agency.

Born in 1951, Lord Smith was educated in Edinburgh and then Pembroke College, Cambridge, achieving a double first in English (and later a PhD on Wordsworth and Coleridge) and was also a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard.

He began his political career as a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Islington, becoming MP for Islington South and Finsbury in 1983. In 1992, he joined the Shadow Cabinet and held several frontbench posts before Labour came to power in 1997. He served as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport until 2001, when he returned to the back benches, standing down from the Commons in 2005. Immediately afterwards, he was made a life peer.

He chaired the Environment Agency from 2008 to 2014; from 2007 to 2017, he was also Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Speakers

Professor Caroline Bassett

Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities 

Caroline Bassett is Professor of Digital Humanities, Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, a Member of the Faculty of English at Cambridge, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. She researches digital technologies and cultural change, focusing on critical theory, gender and technology, digital justice, AI and generative writing.

Key monographs include Anti-Computing (MUP, 2022), Furious (Pluto, 2019), and The Arc and the Machine (MUP, 2014). She publishes widely in multiple formats, ranging from academic journals to arts writing. Current projects focus on digital humanities and AI, artificial creativity, Science Fiction, digital media arts, and the digital afterlife. As the first director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, she has led in establishing, expanding, and making sustainable research, research learning, labs, and data school programmes at CDH, and has inaugurated the MPHIL in Digital Humanities (launched in 2022), and the doctoral programme in Digital Humanities (launched October 2024).

She arrived at Cambridge from Sussex University, where, as a professor of Digital Media, she co-founded the Sussex Humanities Lab. Her first degree was in English (UCL), and she also has a substantial background in tech journalism. 

Dr Jessica Gardner

Cambridge University Librarian & Director of Library Services

Jessica Gardner is Cambridge University Librarian and Director of Library Services. She provides leadership for the University library and archive services, working in coordination with the College library community and with partners across the University’s museums and gardens. She is responsible for advising and representing the University on the future of library and archive matters, including the changing scholarly communication landscape and the UK and Ireland Legal Deposit partnership.

Jessica spearheads financial and strategic planning for the University libraries and archives, in liaison with Faculties, Schools, and Colleges. She manages a significant digital and physical portfolio (the University’s library estate includes 35 physical sites from an off-site store in Ely to the Cambridge Medical Library on the Biomedical Campus) and collections, including the Designated Special Collections of international significance and the University’s own archive.

She oversees the future of libraries and archives for the University, informed by changing academic requirements and visions, digitalisation, estate strategy, and the need for operational efficiency. 

Dr Elisabeth Kendall

Academic and Mistress of Girton College

Elisabeth Kendall is The Mistress [President] of Girton College at the University of Cambridge. She is a world-renowned Arabist, Middle East expert and Yemen specialist, whose current research focuses on Arabic cultural production and non-state armed groups.

She has spent significant time in the field, especially in Yemen. She has lectured at government, military and scholarly institutions all around the world and is a frequent contributor to international television and print media. She has authored and edited several works on Arabic and Islamic literature, language, culture and politics, and she is currently working on a new book, 'Rock Stars of Jihad'.

In 2022, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, in recognition of her "distinguished academic career as a British Arabist at the top of the field, and awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Glasgow, "in recognition of great distinction in the field of Arabic Studies".