Mary Beard

Awards & Honours

Awards Won

Honours

Covers

Mary Beard's career is remarkable for the way she has combined world-class scholarship with genuine popular reach. She is one of the few classicists to have won a Wolfson History Prize, a Princess of Asturias Award, and a damehood, all for the same body of work. Her book SPQR spent months on bestseller lists and has been translated into 40 languages. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and appointed a trustee of the British Museum, two of the highest honours in British cultural life. Her retirement gift of an £80,000 scholarship for disadvantaged students shows her commitment to widening access to classics.

AwardsBeard has won several major awards for her scholarship and public engagement. She received the Wolfson History Prize in 2009 for The Roman Triumph. In 2016, she was awarded both the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and the Bodley Medal. She was appointed OBE in 2013 and elevated to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2018.

Honours & Distinctions

Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy·2010

Elected for her contributions to classical scholarship.

Trustee of the British Museum

British Museum·2014

Appointed as a trustee of the British Museum.

Royal Academy of Arts Professor of Ancient Literature

Royal Academy of Arts·2018

Appointed to this prestigious professorship.

Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College·1984

Elected as a fellow of her alma mater.

Magazine Covers

The Guardian

2018-01-30

The cult of Mary Beard

The New Yorker

2014-01-01

Learned but accessible