Anne Campbell

Areas of Interest

Education, Politics and Government, Literature

Honorary Award

Honorary Doctor of Philosophy, 1997

Biography

Educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, Anne Campbell was MP for Cambridge from 1992 to 2005, taking particular interest in science and technology, education and economic affairs, Cambridge transport, housing and the city environment. Prior to being elected to parliament, she was Head of Statistics and Data Processing at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge. She also taught Mathematics at Cambridge secondary schools before becoming a senior lecturer in Statistics at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University).

Anne founded Opportunity Links, a service that has helped thousands of Cambridgeshire parents arrange child-care and find new jobs. She also founded Cambridge OnLine, providing free internet access for all as well as a wealth of local information. Anne is currently the Chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (since December 2005).

In 1997 Anne Campbell received the Honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Citation

"The Senate of Anglia Polytechnic University has great pleasure in recommending the award of an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy to Mrs Anne Campbell, Member of Parliament for the City of Cambridge.

It is entirely appropriate that a University that has as its mission to be a local University providing higher education and economic and cultural support to the communities of the locality should honour the Member of Parliament in whose constituency the University lies. But our association with Anne Campbell is deeper and warmer than that. We honour her today not only as our Member of Parliament but as a friend and former colleague.

Her association with the city goes back a long way. She graduated in mathematics from Newnham College, Cambridge, and began her career as a teacher in schools in Bishop's Stortford and Cambridge. Not long afterwards she joined the teaching staff of CCAT and taught in the College for the next 13 years so her memory is still green among former colleagues. While she was at the college she taught an enormous range of students from A Level to full degree students. Life at University has not changed. When she was appointed she found herself invited to tech subjects of which she had no previous experience. She found herself a lecturer in statistics, but statistics had not been part of the mathematical tripos. Force of circumstances made her grasp the subject quickly and she was later to become a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and Head of Statistics and Data Processing at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. She also had the thankless task of admissions tutor, a job that can ruin a summer holiday. Colleagues remember her carrying out this job with success. There is also a book in our library by one Anne Campbell, published by Longmans in 1972, entitled "Calculations for Commercial Students". 1972 was a busy year for her for this was the year of the birth of her third child.

Mrs Campbell gained national celebrity in 1992 when she captured the Cambridge seat by a narrow margin in the general election. She is a popular and caring constituency MP and so it is not surprising that she has retained the seat this year with a greatly increased majority. She had to adapt quickly and skilfully as she had already done in mastering statistics to the need to balance family and domestic life with the gruelling schedule of a Member of Parliament at Westminster.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I invite you, Chancellor, to confer an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy on Mrs Anne Campbell MP in recognition of her contribution as Member of Parliament for the city of Cambridge and a distinguished former member of the staff of this University."