The Baroness Bull CBE, Deborah Bull

dancer, writer, and broadcaster; board member of the Fondation en faveur de l’art choreographique in Lausanne and of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation; formerly creative director, Royal Opera House and director of Cultural Partnerships, King’s College London

Deborah Bull danced with The Royal Ballet for 20 years, performing leading roles in the UK and around the world, before becoming creative director, the Royal Opera House. In this role, over the following decade, she developed the ROH2 programme as well as the Royal Opera House Big Screen Live Relays and produced the ROH 2012 Olympic Programming.

In 2012, she joined King’s College London, first as director, Cultural Partnerships and most recently as vice president, Communities & National Engagement. In 2022, she left the university to focus on her work in the House of Lords where, as Baroness Bull, she acts as a deputy speaker, sits on the EU/UK Parliamentary Partnerships Assembly and will chair the Expert Advisory Panel for the government’s forthcoming Cultural Education plan.

She has written and presented a wide range of work for television and radio, including the award winning The Dancer’s Body, and is the author of four books. She has served on the boards of South Bank Centre, Arts Council England, the Arts & Humanities Research Council, as a governor of the BBC and as a judge for the 2010 Booker Prize.

Currently, she is a board member of the Fondation en faveur de l’art choreographique in Lausanne and of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation. She has received honorary doctorates from Derby University, Sheffield Hallam University, the Open University, Kent University and Lincoln University and was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the arts in 1998.