Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010 - Alison Richard

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the academic Professor Alison Richard. Professor Alison Richard is Cambridge University's first full-time female Vice-Chancellor. An anthropologist by training, the role of Vice-Chancellor makes her the principal academic and administrative officer of one of Britain's oldest universities, at the head of some 18,000 undergraduates and assets of more than a billion pounds.

She has been in post for just over a year and, for her, it is a return to the university where she studied as an undergraduate. She accepted the post after spending 30 years in America at Yale University - the last eight there as Provost. But much of her professional life has been based not in the ivory towers of academe, but in remote jungles and foothills working as an anthropologist studying the Madagascan lemur.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: The end of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier
by Richard Strauss
Book: Journals by Captain Cook
Luxury: Solar-powered shower

Published on Sunday, 6th March 2005.

Available Podcasts from Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

Subscribe to Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010 webpage.