THE BRITISH ACADEMY AND CLIO ENTERPRISES LIMITED - Key Persons
Alex Lewis joined the Academy in 2023. As Director of Research, she leads the delivery of the Academy's UK and international research portfolio, ensuring the effective distribution of over £50 million in research funding annually as well as overseeing the growth of the Academy's Early Career Research Network. Alex was previously the Director of Research Strategy at the University of Surrey, where her focus was on large strategic research initiatives and to help the university secure funding and build partnerships. Here Alex was instrumental in supporting the creation of two pan-university Institutes in People-centred AI and Sustainability. Prior to this Alex spent six years at SOAS, first as Research Manager and then as Director of Research and Enterprise, and during this time successfully modernised the research support, which helped to double research income, and strongly advocated for supporting equitable partnerships. This followed a role as Research Development Manager at Sussex University and an academic career in chemistry at University College London.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Stenton Fund Committee
Dr Molly Morgan Jones was appointed in 2018. She was previously senior research leader with RAND Europe, an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis. Prior to joining RAND Europe, Molly worked for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She received her DPhil in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Sussex and has a BA in biology from Northwestern University (Illinois), United States.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit Committee
- Secretary
Job Titles:
- Secretary
- Librarian / Archivist / Curator
- Library and Archive
Job Titles:
- Director of Resources
- Secretary
Graeme Appleby joined the British Academy in September 2019. He was previously Director of Finance and Planning at SOAS, University of London, from 2013 and acted as Registrar for periods in 2013-14. He is celebrated for his huge contribution to SOAS where he joined as a Senior Management Accountant and became Director of Finance in 2009 following successful promotions. His achievements include the creation of the School's resource allocation model, and the formalisation of planning processes which link academic and financial planning. Prior to joining SOAS he worked in accountancy, before joining the HE sector as a management accountant at the University of Westminster in 1996.
Job Titles:
- Director of Development
- Secretary
Jo Hopkins was appointed in March 2014. Jo has over 17 years' experience in fundraising and strategic planning. She was previously Global Director at World Child Cancer for five years, where she helped to set up an international development charity helping children with cancer in low and middle-income countries. She has worked at The Historic Dockyard Chatham, The Place (a contemporary dance centre), CLIC Sargent, the Institute of Cancer Research and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She is a Trustee of Omnibus, an arts centre in south-west London housed in a former Victorian library.
Job Titles:
- Director of Communications
Liz Hutchinson joined the Academy in January 2017. She was previously the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Goldsmiths, University of London where she led a new communications strategy to promote and champion research and increase student numbers from the UK and overseas. She significantly developed their digital communications, delivering an award-winning website and content strategy. Prior to Goldsmiths, she held communications roles in a range of organisations including the Electoral Commission, the General Social Care Council and The Learning Trust.
Frederike (Frida) Löwenthal was born in Cologne in 1847. In 1866, she married her cousin Ludwig Mond (b. 1839), a young industrial chemist. The couple moved to England in pursuit of Ludwig's blossoming business interests in 1867. In 1873, Ludwig Mond went into partnership with John Brunner to form the company Brunner Mond & Company. Ludwig's scientific and commercial achievement can be measured by the fact that his son Alfred would later (in 1926) merge this business with three others to create the industrial giant, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).
Growing financial and commercial status was accompanied by increasing social standing for both Ludwig and Frida Mond, and a growing role in the worlds of learning and the arts. Ludwig's scientific eminence and curiosity were matched on Frida's part by an equally passionate enthusiasm for literature and art. And in these cultural interests she was aided and abetted by her gifted former schoolfriend Henriette Hertz (b. 1846), who had been summoned from Germany to keep her company in England, and had remained with her ever since. Ludwig, Frida and Henriette were able to lead a lavish life of travelling, entertaining and collecting. They regularly wintered at the Palazzo Zuccari in Rome, which they turned into a centre of cosmopolitan intellectual life in the city.
Frida Mond was well aware of the British Academy: in 1907, Ludwig's niece, Miss Constance Schweich, had made an extremely generous donation to the Academy to establish a fund devoted to the furtherance of research on ‘Ancient Civilization with reference to Biblical Study'. And Frida personally knew Israel Gollancz, who was Secretary of the British Academy, and also Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London. In 1910, Gollancz would marry Alide Goldschmidt, the niece of that same Henriette Hertz who was Frida's best friend.
On 18 February 1910, Frida Mond wrote to Israel Gollancz: ‘I desire to offer through you, for the acceptance of the British Academy, the sum of £500 a year for at least three years, to form the nucleus of a Fund (which it is hoped will be augmented by others donors, so that in time an annual income of about this amount may accrue) to be devoted to the furtherance of research and criticism, historical, philological, and philosophical, in the various branches of English literature, including the investigations of problems in the history and usage of English, written and spoken, and textual and documentary work elucidating the development of English language and literature.'
Frida explained that she was prompted to offer this gift particularly ‘to give expression to the widespread feeling of gratitude to the British Academy for the effective and dignified manner in which the Milton Tercentenary Commemoration was organized and carried out.' In December 1908, the British Academy had successfully risen to the challenge of leading the national commemoration of the 300th anniversary of John Milton's birth, organising an impressive series of events. This bold initiative had clearly been successful in raising the Academy's profile.
In 1930, Israel Gollancz himself died. From that year onwards, both the lecture and the prize established through Frida Mond's bequest would bear his name. And in 1930 his widow presented to King's College a bust of Frida Mond that had been in Gollancz's possession. The British Academy now owns and proudly displays a copy of that bust.
The bust of Frida Mond was sculpted in 1886 by Anna Dabis (1847-1927), a fellow German émigrée and one of Frida's many artistic protégés. The British Academy commissioned a copy of the bust in 2011, and it is now displayed at the foot of the grand staircase in No. 11 Carlton House Terrace.