Fiona Stafford FBA is Professor of English Language and Literature and a Fellow of Somerville College at the University of Oxford.
[1][2] Stafford was born in Lincoln but moved around during her childhood following her father's postings in the Royal Air Force.
She studied for a BA in English language and literature at the University of Leicester, writing a dissertation on RAF slang.
[3] Her thesis was on The sublime savage : a study of James Macpherson and the poems of Ossian in relation to the cultural context of Scotland in the 1750s and 1760s.
[4] After a short spell teaching in the United States Stafford returned to Oxford and was appointed a tutorial fellow of Somerville College.