New York, New York, March 7, 2024 — Carnegie Corporation of New York announced today during its quarterly meeting that two new members have been named to its board of trustees. Mark Damazer, former BBC executive and chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, is joined by Margaret MacMillan, emeritus professor of international history at the University of Oxford. Each will serve a four-year term.
“On behalf of the entire board of trustees and staff, it is my honor to welcome Mark Damazer and Margaret MacMillan to Carnegie Corporation of New York,” said Thomas H. Kean, chair of the board of trustees and former governor of New Jersey. “The depth of their expertise, their wisdom, and their passionate engagement with the critical issues of today’s world will prove invaluable to the stewardship of this great foundation.”
“I have worked closely with Mark over the years, both in my role as a Booker Prize judge and as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford,” said Dame Louise Richardson, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. “Mark’s outstanding career in both broadcasting and higher education make him an ideal fit for our foundation. Margaret, whom I have long admired and also know from my years at Oxford, is a distinguished historian whose writings on the intellectual and politcal currents of the 20th century have set standards for scholarly rigor, insight, and elegant prose. I am most delighted to welcome both to the Corporation’s board of trustees.”
Mark Damazer spent the bulk of his career at the BBC, where he held several senior editorial positions, including editor of television news, head of current affairs, head of political programs, and, finally, controller of Radio 4 (2004–2010). He was responsible for the network’s overall strategy and budget, digital content, commissions, and quality control across a range of genres, including arts, religion, science, documentaries, history, current affairs, comedy, and drama. Radio 4 was named U.K. station of the year in 2008.
Damazer created the partnership with the British Museum for Neil MacGregor’s award-winning series A History of the World in 100 Objects. An honorary fellow of the U.K.’s Radio Academy, he returned to the BBC as a member of its board (the BBC Trust) from 2015 to 2017, where he served on its editorial standards committee, focusing on the fairness, accuracy, and impartiality of all BBC programs. Read full bio here.
Margaret MacMillan is a historian specializing in the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. She is currently professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto and professor emeritus of international history at the University of Oxford. She was provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto between 2002 and 2007 and the warden of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2017.
Her publications include Women of the Raj (1988); Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2001), for which she won the Samuel Johnson Prize (U.K.) and the Governor General’s Award for English Language Non-Fiction (Canada); Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World (2006); The Uses and Abuses of History (2008); and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (2014). Her most recent book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020). In 2021 MacMillan won the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Read full bio here.