Knauss, Jenny

Jenny Knauss was born Jennifer Lilian Margret Dobbin on February 23, 1937 in Melbourn, a village near Cambridge, UK. Her parents were Marjorie Alice Louise Dobbin (formerly Webb) and Robert Raymond Dobbin. Some of her earliest memories were of Nazi bombings during World War II, when fire aimed at the nearby military installation strayed across the road onto the family farm.

She was initially home-schooled by her mother, an infant teacher, and then a private tutor, before attending the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge from 1945-1954. She studied Modern History at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1958 with second-class honors. From 1958-1960 she was a graduate student in Somerville College, preparing a Ph.D. thesis on West African History in the period before independence from British rule, and also worked at the Commonwealth Institute at Oxford.

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