Sigrid Rausing
Chair
Sigrid Rausing FRSL is the Publisher of Granta Books, and the former Editor of Granta Magazine. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London, which was followed by a 2-year Honorary Fellowship in the same department. Her academic monograph, History, Memory and Identity in Post Soviet Estonia: the End of a Collective Farm, was published in 2004 (Oxford University Press). Her first trade book, Everything is Wonderful (Grove Atlantic) was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Her memoir, Mayhem (Hamish Hamilton and Knopf) was short-listed for the Wellcome Prize in 2018.
She has won numerous awards for her philanthropy, and serves and has served on several boards, including Charleston, the museum home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Sevenoaks School, where she was Governor, and the Cultural Council of Lund University. She is an Emeritus Council Member of the Royal College of Art, and Ambassador Council member of the Scholars at Risk Network. She is an Emeritus member of the International Board of Human Rights Watch and of the Advisory Board of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court. In 2024 she was made Vice-President of Charleston.
She has received Honorary Doctorates from University College London, the Open University and the University of Kent. She holds a Morrell Fellowship from the University of York, and is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and of St Antony’s College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.