Jane Stapleton (born 26 March 1952) is an Australian academic lawyer with a specialism in tort law. She is an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and was the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2016 to 2022.
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Early life and education
Stapleton was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1952.
She initially studied science, gaining a BSc in chemistry from the University of New South Wales (1974) and a PhD in physical organic chemistry from the University of Adelaide (1977) supervised by John Hamilton Bowie. She came to the UK in the mid-1970s and in 1977 took up a post-doctoral research post at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Cambridge in the laboratory of Dudley Williams.
She then decided to switch to law. She gained an LLB from the Australian National University (1981), followed by a DPhil in private law from the University of Oxford (1984). Her thesis, supervised by Patrick Atiyah, was on compensation for non-traumatic injuries. In 2008 the University of Oxford bestowed upon her a doctorate of civil law.