Rosemary Thorp: 2 October 1940 to 8 November 2025
I am very sorry to have to pass on the sad news that our much-loved colleague and emeritus fellow, Rosemary Thorp, passed away on Saturday (8 November) lunchtime at the age of 85.
Rosemary’s career has been inextricably linked with Oxford and St Antony’s. She took her BA from Oxford in 1962 and her Master’s from Oxford in 1966 and, apart from a brief stint covering teaching leaves in Berkeley between 1967-70, spent the whole of the rest of her career at St Antony’s, first as a research officer in the economy of Latin America (succeeding Laurence Whitehead when he moved to Nuffield) and Senior Associate Member (SAM) and then as a Lecturer, subsequently Reader, in the Economics of Latin America. She enjoyed the fact that she had never had to complete a doctoral degree to become a permanent member of Oxford faculty and was always ‘Mrs’ rather than ‘Dr’ or ‘Professor’ Thorp.
Rosemary was three times the Director of the Latin American Centre, the Head of the Oxford Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House) during 2003-4, as well as Chair of the Trustees of Oxfam UK for five years between 2001-6, for which she was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List 2009. She was also throughout her career a trailblazer for female academics in an almost completely male-dominated academic environment. When she was elected to a Governing Body Fellowship at St Antony’s in 1978, she was the first (and, until Ann Waswo arrived in 1982, the only) female fellow since Elizabeth Monroe, who had retired in 1970.
Rosemary’s academic achievements are both extensive and remain today highly influential. The book that she was most proud of (because it was her first, took longest to write, was the most dense – in a good sense – and probably the most consequential) was her economic history written with her student, Geoff Bertram, Peru 1890-1977: Growth and Policy in an Open Economy, which is still widely used in Peru in the Spanish edition today. Her Progress, Poverty and Exclusion: An Economic History of Latin America in the Twentieth Century, written at the invitation of the Inter-American Development Bank in 1996, is also still a much-used textbook. As well as contributing two chapters for the Cambridge History of Latin America on the Latin American Economies (1913-1919 and in the 1940s), she wrote on social policy in Peru and Venezuela, and on decentralisation in Chile and Colombia (OUP 2001) with Alan Angell and Pamela Lowden. Between 2004 and 2010 she participated in a highly-productive DFID-funded research centre at Queen Elizabeth House on Ethnicity, Inequality and Human Security (CRISE), specialising in research on Bolivia, Peru and Guatemala.
Rosemary formally retired in 2008 (and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Catholic University of Peru in 2008 and an Honorary Professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico, Lima in 2010) but remained extremely active in research, being awarded a two-year Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to work on the political economy of inequality in Latin America which led to a further series of major publications over the following decade.
Beyond her academic work, Rosemary’s contributions to both St Antony’s in particular and area studies in Oxford more generally are inestimable. She held at some point almost every post in the College, including General Editor of Macmillan/St Antony’s series. She was Sub-Warden (and briefly Acting Warden, when Marrack Goulding was ill for a period) of the college in the early 2000s. As recent accounts of the development of both area studies (SIAS, latterly OSGA – St Antony’s and the University of Oxford – St Antony’s) and development studies (QEH/ODID – St Antony’s and International Development Studies at Oxford – St Antony’s) produced for the College’s 75th anniversary show, neither would enjoy their current status and independence without Rosemary’s crucial interventions after the creation of the Academic Divisions in the University in 2000.
More than anything, it is hard to imagine a better and kinder colleague than Rosemary. She was always willing to help anyone in a difficult situation, and many of us are indebted to her. Her students adored her, and many made pilgrimages back to the UK long after she had retired to see her. She was always generous and open-minded in discussion and her judgement about how to get things done was second-to-none which is why she was turned to for wise advice to such a great extent by successive wardens and bursars. She will be much missed.
Roger Goodman, Warden
10 November 2025
