Emma Barnett

Early life and education Barnett was born on 5 February 1985 at Hope Hospital in Salford to Jewish parents, Ian, a commercial property surveyor, and Michele Barnett and is a single child. Her grandmother fled Wiener Neustadt, Austria, to escape the Nazis.

Barnett was brought up in Broughton Park. . In 2006 she graduated with a degree in History and Politics from the University of Nottingham. She obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies in 2007.

In 2010, Barnett's father was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for operating brothels in the Greater Manchester area, following a prior eight month suspended sentence in 2005, after which he had continued to operate the brothels under other people's names. Her mother received a suspended sentence for money laundering related to income from the brothels. According to police, they "found emails between Mr Barnett and his daughter Emma, talking about his 'whores'". she has written that the experience traumatised her and that it has been a "long, horribly bumpy road to forgiveness". and then, from 2012, the women's editor. Barnett launched The Telegraphs digital section, "Wonder Women", in October 2012 with contributors such as Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News. She also became chair of the UJIA Jewish media network and of the UJIA Skirt Network, a networking group for Jewish women.

A radio presenter for LBC for almost three years until early 2014, Barnett joined BBC Radio 5 Live that summer. From November 2014, she presented the station's Hit List programme, a countdown of the 40 highest profile online news stories of the week. After leaving The Telegraph, Barnett started presenting the morning slot on BBC Radio 5 Live in September 2016, being the first woman to have a solo daily slot since the departure of Shelagh Fogarty and Victoria Derbyshire two years earlier in a new-look schedule. a programme on which she had already been an occasional presenter, the youngest in the programme's history. A decade before Barnett began her role on Woman's Hour, at 17, she did work experience with its presenter, Jenni Murray. "after pleading guilty to keeping brothels with a turnover of more than £2.5m".

In March 2018, Barnett began a series of podcasts for Historic England entitled Irreplaceable: A History of England in 100 Places. The podcast, presented by Barnett and Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb, was nominated for the British Podcast Awards in the 'Best Branded Content' category in April 2018.

In March 2019, she became one of the regular presenters on BBC Two's Newsnight. In 2019 her book Period. It's About Bloody Time was released, which covered her experience of endometriosis.

In January 2021, Barnett became the main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. In Barnett's first week, a guest on the programme, Kelechi Okafor, refused to be interviewed by her after overhearing her discuss with the programme producers what Barnett called "allegedly anti-semitic comments" previously made by Okafor. In the following month, one hundred public figures signed an open letter to the BBC criticising what they called Barnett's "strikingly hostile" interview of Zara Mohammed, the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain. In June 2021, Sinéad O'Connor complained about how Barnett had questioned her about her mental health during a Woman's Hour interview. O'Connor announced, because of the interview, she would retire from performing, but two days later retracted her decision to retire.

In January 2022, Barnett started a new role at Bloomberg, hosting the weekly show Emma Barnett Meets. In this role, she has interviewed prominent figures including Al Sharpton, Anthony Fauci and Tim Berners Lee.

In March 2024, Barnett announced she would step down from Woman's Hour in April, to join the presenting team on BBC Radio 4's Today and replacing Martha Kearney, who was leaving the programme after the 2024 General Election. While at The Telegraph, Barnett was named Digital Journalist of the Year by the Association of Online Publishers and Digital Writer of the Year at the 2011 Online Media Awards. and Radio Broadcaster of the Year in 2018 by the Broadcasting Press Guild.

Barnett won the Gold award for Best Speech Presenter at the 2022 Audio and Radio Industry Awards for her work on Woman's Hour.

Personal life Barnett met her husband, Jeremy Weil, when they were both studying at the University of Nottingham in 2004. They married at the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater in 2012. In 2018, they had a son and in 2023, they had a daughter, after five rounds of IVF and experiencing one miscarriage. They live in Brixton, south London. Barnett and Weil are co-creators of a series of colouring books called Colour Your Streets.

Barnett is an Orthodox Jew but, religiously, is not very observant, and is ambivalent between Orthodox and Reform Judaism. In a 2014 BBC Radio segment, she expressed discomfort at women being rabbis. She has volunteered for British Jewish welfare charity Norwood.

Barnett suffers from endometriosis. In August 2024 she discussed living with pain in a BBC Radio 4 interview with Kirsty Young. In June 2026 Barnett presented a 1 hour documentary on endometriosis, initially transmitted on BBC Two, including giving details of the personal impact that the condition had on her life. On 19th August 2026 she returned to the Today programme saying she had been in hospital for treatment of her endometriosis.