Mary Laven lectures in History at the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Jesus College. She grew up in Canterbury, and – apart from interludes in Venice and York – has spent most of her subsequent life in Cambridge.

She loves Italy, archives, beer, and walking around the suburbs of unfamiliar cities. Her first book, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize..