The wonderful obituary appearing in today’s Financial Times of Dame Stephanie Shirley adds to a growing number of so well-deserved obituaries and tributes to her life and work. I encourage you to read the FT’s contribution, entitled ‘Child refugee who became an IT pioneer’ (16 August 2025: 7). Since her escape to England in 1938 on a Kindertransport train, she made Britain her home, studied math, and launched what was originally a women’s only IT company – literally from her kitchen table. She hired other women to help write programs from their own homes. Her company, Freelance Programmers (FP), continued to evolve to become so successful that its sale enabled her to become a leading philanthropist, primarily in support of fundraising for treatments of autism.
But her gifts also enabled the launch of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). I highly recommend the wonderful tribute from the OII, an Oxford University department that owes its very establishment to her generous contribution. Joining as the first director of the OII in 2002, as the institute was founded in 2001, I began my role with an administrator, Linda Frankland, and a receptionist, in a historically important building owned by Balliol College at 1 St Giles, a building that existed in some form during the civil wars of the late 1600s (I’m told injured soldiers were treated in this building). In 2002, we began developing this university ‘start-up’ and refurbishing 1 St Giles. I’ll always remember how pleasantly surprised I was that Dame Stephanie came to Oxford to visit us during the first day, of my arrival.
Throughout my time at the OII, Dame Stephanie was always incredibly supportive. She never directed me, but always asked constructive questions, like: “When are you doing an inaugural lecture?” [I did give one in 2007.]
Dame Stephanie’s major donation to Balliol College and the University of Oxford to establish the OII gave life to what was arguably the first multidisciplinary department at a major university focused on study of the Internet. It grew from a start-up in a renovated 1 St Giles to a major department at the University. And, in the coming months, as Dame Stephanie knew, the OII will be moving into a fantastic state-of-the-art quarters in The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the University of Oxford.
Over the years since 2001, Dame Stephanie continued to follow and support the OII in multiple ways, as you will see in the OII’s tribute. But I want to emphasise one point and say to all the faculty, staff, students, founders like Andrew Graham, politicians like Derek Wyatt, the University, the directors that followed me, and other supporters of the OII, that Dame Stephanie was always very proud of her OII – what you accomplished. You contributed another source of pride to her wonderful life, which truly was, to quote her own humble mission cited in the FT obituary, ‘a life saved that was worth living.’
