Meet the Speaker

Mary Hockaday

British Journalist & Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge

Mary Hockaday is Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and a Trustee of the British Library. She was formerly Director of BBC World Service and Controller BBC World Service English until 2021, growing the weekly audience to WSE to nearly 100 million. From 2009-2014 she was Head of the BBC Newsroom, overseeing the BBC’s core news services on radio, television and online for domestic and global audiences  and leading innovation in digital and visual journalism. Mary was Editor of BBC World Service News and Current Affairs from 2001 to 2006. WSNCA won a Special Sony Gold award in recognition of its 9/11 coverage.

In the early 1990s Mary was based in Prague a correspondent for the BBC and The Independent, covering post-communist Czechoslovakia. She is author of a biography of Milena Jesenska, 20^th Century Czech journalist and muse of Franz Kafka.  

As well as serving on the Board of the British Library, Mary is a Lay Trustee with the Royal College of Emergency, an Independent Non-executive Director with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a Board trustee with a small charity focused on climate communication. She is a former Trustee of the Girls’ Day School Trust and a former external examiner for Cardiff University’s School of Journalism.

Mary studied English at Cambridge University and then went to New York University on a Fulbright scholarship for a post-graduate MA in journalism.

Learn more about Mary HERE