Zoah Hedges-Stocks is an English journalist who became the first travelling showman to study at and graduate from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

Biography

Hedges-Stocks was born into a Suffolk family of travelling showmen, who have worked on fairgrounds since the 1800s. As a child she worked on the dodgems and candy floss stalls of the family fair during the summer season and lived at

Leiston Leiston ( ) is a town and civil parish in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It is close to Saxmundham and Aldeburgh, north-east of Ipswich and north-east of London. The town had a population of 5,508 at th ...

, near

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk District, East Suffolk district, in the English county, county of Suffolk, England, north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the comp ...

, in the winter. Despite despite having disrupted schooldays Hedges-Stocks achieved an two As and a B in her A-Levels. Hedges-Stocks matriculated to

Murray Edwards College Murray Edwards College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It was founded in 1954 as New Hall and renamed in 2008. The name honours a gift of £30 million by alumna Ros Edwards and her husband Steve, and the firs ...

at the University of Cambridge in 2010. She studied History and achieved a first class degree. During her studies, she edited ''The Cambridge Student'' newspaper. Hedges-Stocks has commented that: "Among travelling showmen it’s often felt that education isn’t that relevant, you know what you’re going to do — settle down with a nice traveller boy and work on the fairs. A lot of people in my community didn’t understand the application process was selective — they assumed you could walk in. This wasn’t to do with ignorance it’s just not really part of our world. People were interested as it was something new and exciting." Her story attracted coverage in the national press and on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

's ''

Woman's Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History The first BBC programme for women was the programme cal ...

''. In January 2014, she began a journalism training course with the

Press Association PA Media (formerly the Press Association) is a multimedia news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and ...

. She now works as a freelance journalist, writing for the '' Barking and Dagenham Post,'' ''

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, Newnham Recorder,'' and ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are often names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * The Telegraph (Adelaide), ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaid ...

,'' among other local and national publications. She has used her platform as a journalist and Cambridge alumnus to criticise Murray Edwards President, Dorothy Byrne, who planned in 2021 to introduce a series of seminars to teach women about their fertility in response to the falling national birth rate. Also in 2021, she went viral on

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after people misinterpreted her surname and approached her for financial advice, prompting her to tweet "this is not a finance account."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:hedges stocks, zoah Living people Alumni of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge English women journalists People from Leiston Writers from Suffolk