A personal tribute

Newnham (1976). Robinson Fellow (1989 - 2010); Robinson Graduate Tutor and Praelector. Procotor (2003-6), Senior Proctor (2004-5). Peterhouse Fellow and Director of Development (2011 – 2024).

Dr Saskia Murk Jansen died suddenly and unexpectedly at home on 19th February this year. She was one of my closest friends.

Saskia and I met on our first day at Robinson College, 1st October 1989. As new Fellows, I suspect we were both equally apprehensive, but Saskia hid it better than me. She had the most remarkable poise and elegance and the sort of calmness that I always thought could have brought warring politicians to heel simply by her presence. Certainly, she had that effect on other animals, and it was over other animals that our friendship first kindled. We discovered our shared love of horses during our first lunch in College, and that same week, Saskia came out riding with me. She had that same poise and elegance on a horse and, I quickly discovered, was utterly unflappable. My horses over the years were nearly all rescue animals or ones I had bought cheaply because of their bad behaviour, aiming to retrain them in all cases. I think it would be fair to say that Saskia was rather better at that than I was; certainly, she was thrown off far less often. But between us, we did retrain them and some years later when Saskia took up carriage driving, I helped her train her first few Caspian driving horses. Needless to say, Saskia looked every bit as elegant in the driving seat of an antique governess cart that she’d restored as she did riding a horse. And she was still the unflappable one of the two of us, even when a horse she was driving ran into a hedge at speed and upended the whole cart.

Saskia grew up in north London, educated at the local primary school and then winning a scholarship to St Paul’s Girls School, Hammersmith for her secondary education. Her early life was not an easy one. Her mother contracted polio when Saskia was just three years old, and neighbours cared for Saskia as her mother’s life hung in the balance. Then when Saskia was 21 years old and preparing for her finals in the Modern and Medieval Language Tripos (Dutch and Spanish) at Newnham College, Cambridge, her mother tragically drowned in a sailing accident. Those awful life experiences may have contributed to Saskia’s deep empathy and compassion for other students facing terrible challenges, for later when she was a Graduate Tutor at Robinson, I remember well how very much she cared for each and every one of her tutees and most especially when they were troubled. When she and her husband John took in young refugees from Eritrea, I was not the least surprised and only wished I had half of her determination to set the world’s wrongs to right.

That determination ran really deep in Saskia. I think it influenced the focus of her research: the Beguines in the Middle Ages, lay religious women who lived alone or with one or two other liked-minded women and who dedicated themselves to looking after the poor and sick in their communities, and who from my conversations with Saskia, were remarkable independent thinkers, writing in the vernacular so that everyone could understand. Saskia herself was a committed Anglican, but her religion was something she wore quietly.

When her British Academy Research Fellowship ended, Saskia moved to the University Development Office, as it was then. She was Administrator of the American Friends of Cambridge University, the University’s first Head of Alumni Relations and was Assistant Director International Relations from 1992 - 1996.  When she left the Development Office, she moved on to become the Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister’s Special Adviser on Education, particularly improving science education in state schools – a subject close to my own heart – raising the educational performance of children in care and the development of the Academy Schools’ programme.  Then in 2011, she became a Fellow and the Director of Development of Peterhouse, Cambridge   She and I often spoke about the need for equal access to education, how education is an essential ingredient for freedom, and these things palpably drove her passion for development work. We talked many times about how to improve university education for diverse educational and cultural backgrounds, and from at least some of these conversations sprung ideas for new development programs.

Most recently, Saskia was teaching me Dutch so that when I was a visiting professor in Nijmegen, I would be able to converse with my neighbours. Phrases like, “Ik heb een schaajpe in mijn tuin,” (I have a little sheep in my garden), because she knew without doing the experiment, that the only way to make me concentrate for more than two minutes was to teach me silly phrases. Worryingly, it worked, and I now have a good-sized portfolio of interesting conversation starting points.

I cannot think of Saskia without also thinking of her husband John, her lifelong soulmate it always seemed to me, and their children, Catherine and John Matthew. Her children were everything to Saskia. They embodied her hope for the future and her belief that the world can be a better place. She was fiercely proud of them, absolutely rightly so in my judgement. She was so proud when she told me how Catherine had responded to being talked over and ignored in a university tutorial; pointedly and robustly, I think summed it up. To Saskia, that was as great an achievement as any final degree (of which she was also, of course, immensely proud). John Matthew’s ability to take over a kitchen and whisk up amazing food with no fuss, she admired every bit as much as his educational and sporting successes. Both have so much of Saskia, their kindness, their compassion – and their determination to make the world a better place.

For me, knowing Saskia was somewhere in the world was knowing that there was someone out there who had my back, no matter what stupid thing I might have done. When I had a particularly bad PTSD episode, she sat with me when I was terrified; few could have done that. When I was promoted to Professor, she was there with hugs and champagne. I miss her greatly.

Professor Melinda Duer

Robinson Fellow 1989 – current

See also Peterhouse website.