Lisa Jardine holds the position of Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, as well as being the Director of the AHRB Research Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. She is also a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. She is also a Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Lisa is no stranger to the media. For over a decade she's written and reviewed for most of the major UK broadsheet newspapers, as well as contributing to numerous arts, history and current affairs programmes for both radio and television. Lisa has also found time to judge many awards, from the 1996 Whitbread Prize to the 2002 Booker Prize.

Lisa has written Ingenious Pursuits, a book on scientific discovery during the Enlightenment, and On a Grander Scale, a biography of Christopher Wren. Her latest work, a biography of the 17th century maverick, Robert Hooke, was published in September 2003.