Our warm congratulations to Honorary Fellow Eleanor Sharpston KC who has been made Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George for services to Justice and to the Education of Law in the UK and Europe in the 2025 New Year Honours.
Dame Eleanor (‘Leo’) joined Corpus in 1977 as a graduate student, studying Economics and Law. She founded the Women’s Boat Club at a time when only graduate women were admitted as students to the College and rapidly recruited virtually every able-bodied female member of the MCR into the crew (with much support from male rowers and from the College).
A distinguished barrister, she has for decades combined a career in practice at the Bar with academic posts, such as her recent Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professorship in Legal Science at Cambridge in 2023/24. She served as an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg from 2006 until 2020 – the only woman ever put forward by the UK to serve at the Court, and only the fourth woman to hold one of these key positions.