Barry Supple is an historian whose research interests include business history, modern economic performance and economic policy. He is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge and former Director of the Leverhulme Trust. He completed his doctorate at Christ’s, is a former Fellow, and has been an Honorary Fellow of the College since 1984.
Barry graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1952 and then came up to Christ’s for his PhD. He was Assistant Professor of Business History in the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University from 1955 to 1960 and then Associate Professor of Economic History at McGill University for two years before returning to the UK to take up a Lectureship at the University of Sussex. He was promoted to Reader, then Professor of Economic and Social History, and served as Dean of the School of Social Sciences and later as Pro-Vice-Chancellor. In 1978 he moved to the University of Oxford to become Reader in Recent Social and Economic History and take up a Fellowship at Nuffield College.
In 1981 he was elected to the Chair of Economic History at Cambridge and a Fellowship at Christ’s, before being elected Master of St Catharine’s College in 1984. He resigned the Mastership in 1993 to become Director of the Leverhulme Trust until his retirement in 2001.
He was a consultant to the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund (now Arcadia) from 2001 to 2007. He has lent his expertise to various organisations, is an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford as well as Christ’s and St Catharine’s Colleges, Cambridge, and holds honorary doctorates from several universities.