Professor Dame Sarah Springman

Professor Dame Sarah Springman DBE, FREng, is the Principal at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Sarah was educated at Wycombe Abbey, and Girton College, Cambridge. She read for an MPhil (St Catharine’s) and a PhD (Magdalene) in Soil Mechanics and became the first female Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

In 1997, Sarah moved to ETH Zurich, Switzerland, becoming the first female Professor of Geotechnical Engineering in Western Europe and the first female Professor of Civil Engineering in Switzerland. Her expertise lies in soil-structure-interaction and geotechnical aspects of natural hazards. Sarah was Rector of the university from 2015-2021.

Sarah was also a high-performance athlete, representing Great Britain and Northern Ireland in triathlon from 1984-1993. Elected Vice-President of World Triathlon (ITU), serving until 1996, she lobbied for triathlon to become a recognised sport in both the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, writing the women’s action plan for Triathlon: ‘to achieve equality of opportunity, recognition and reward’. For her work in sport, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Sky Sports Awards in 2013.

^{Photo credit: Oxford Atelier}