Sylvana Tomaselli


Sylvana Palma Windsor, Countess of St Andrews is a Canadian-born academic and historian. She is related to the British royal family as the wife of George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, elder son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. A historian and lecturer in History at the University of Cambridge, she is usually known professionally as Miss Sylvana Tomaselli.

Early life

Tomaselli was born on 28 May 1957 at Placentia, Newfoundland, daughter of Maximilian Karl Tomaselli by his wife Josiane née Preschez. She was educated in Canada and England.

Marriages and family

She married firstly, on 25 December 1977 at Vancouver, John Paul Jones, son of Captain Geoffrey Jones of Barbados, but they divorced in 1981 without children.
She married secondly, on 9 January 1988 at Leith in Scotland, George, Earl of St Andrews, and they have three children:
Lady St Andrews' Catholicism no longer precludes her husband's right to ascend the throne. Two of her children, Edward and Marina, were received into the Catholic Church, thereby surrendering their places in the line of succession to the thrones of the Commonwealth realms, although Lord and Lady St Andrews' younger daughter, Amelia, is still in remainder to the British Crown.

Academic career

Tomaselli, who has received BA, MA and MA degrees, became a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge in 2004. She specialises in French and British political theory in the 18th century, especially the history of womanhood, and has written about John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. She is the translator of Book II of the Seminar of Jacques Lacan, The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. She teaches the three History of Political Theory Papers and is an affiliated Lecturer of the Faculties of History as well as of Social and Political Sciences.
She is a founding member of the European Centre for the Philosophy of Gender, Siegen, Germany, and is currently Director of Studies in History Part I and Social & Political Sciences at St John's College in the University of Cambridge. She also acts as a pastoral tutor for students of Natural Sciences at St John's College.
Tomaselli has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.