Elizabeth Millicent Chilver

Elizabeth Millicent "Sally" Chilver (née Graves; 3 August 1914 – 3 July 2014) was principal of Bedford College, University of London from 1964-1971 and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1971-79.

Background

The only daughter of Philip Perceval Graves and his wife Millicent, Elizabeth Chilver was educated at Benenden School, and Somerville College, Oxford. She was an historian, political scientist and anthropologist.

Career

She was a journalist from 1937-39. During the Second World War she served as a temporary Civil Servant during World War II, taking up journalism again for the Daily News (1945–47). She was a temporary principal and secretary of the Social Science Research Council and Economic Research Committee of the Colonial Office from 1948-57. She became a director of University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies from 1957–61 and later a senior researcher there from 1961-64. She was then Principal of Bedford College before becoming Principal of Lady Margaret Hall. She established Bedford as a co-educational college in 1965.

In 1995 and 1996 various Festschrift publications appeared to celebrate her work, especially in the field of Cameroon Studies where she was known as "Mama for Story". In Cameroon she worked closely and published with Phyllis Kaberry.

Personal life

In 1937, she married Richard Clementson Chilver (died 1985), a civil servant. She was a niece of Robert Graves and a friend of Inez Holden, who did research into the archives of the Baptist Mission to West Africa for which Chilver made payment arrangements.