Mary Beard is an English Classical scholar and Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of ancient literature. She is also the classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement, and author of the blog, "A Don's Life", which appears in The Times as a regular column. Her frequent media appearances and sometimes controversial public statements have led to her being described as "Britain's best-known classicist".

Beard received a BA (Hons) at Newnham, which in time was converted to an MA.She remained at Cambridge for her 1982 Ph.D. thesis entitled, The state religion in the late Roman Republic: a study based on the works of Cicero.

From 1979 to 1983 Beard lectured in Classics at King's College London. She returned to Cambridge in 1984 as a Fellow of Newnham College and the only woman lecturer in the Classics faculty. Rome in the Late Republic, which she co-wrote with the Cambridge ancient historian Michael Crawford, was published the same year.

Beard became Classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement in 1992, and Beard became Professor of Classics at Cambridge. She also was elected Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature for 2008–2009 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has delivered a series of lectures on "Roman Laughter".

She has appeared in many documentaries and television specials including Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town, * Jamie's Dream School on Channel 4, she wrote and presented the three-part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard* on BBC 2. Beard is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4 series, A Point of View, delivering essays on a broad range of topics including Miss World and the Oxbridge interview.

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