I was born and brought up in Ireland - Derry (then, alas, a city of murderous religious battles) and the more peaceful Donegal - and attended a peace-loving Quaker school, (overlapping there with the actress Judi Dench), followed by top Oxford degrees in classics and anthropology, then fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, Fiji, Texas and England, all contexts for learning about ideas, about beautiful words, and, most of all, about people, finally a fulfilling career at Britain’s pioneering Open University. Regular ecumenical church -member

My portfolio of thirteen screenplays (including two produced, two further with offered options), have all won awards in international filmfreeway contests,

In a more formal context, Ruth Finnegan OBE is Emeritus Professor of the Open University UK, Fellow of the British Academy, International Fellow of the American Folklore Society, and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College Oxford. An anthropologist, poet and librettist,
she is the author of a wide range of prize-winning academic books of the multi-award literary novels 'Black Inked Pearl' and ‘Voyage of Pearl of the Seas', and, most recently, screenplays. Currently she is deeply engaged as co-editor of ‘Hearing Others’ Voices’, an inspiring new series for young adults ( Balestier Press).