Susan Skilliter

Susan Skilliter (1930–1985) was a British academic, a lecturer in Turkish Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College. She left her library to the College with a bequest which enabled the foundation of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies.

Life Susan Skilliter took a degree in Oriental Studies (Arabic and Persian) at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1962, she was appointed to a lecturership in Turkish at the University of Manchester. She returned to Cambridge to take up a university lecturership in Turkish and a fellowship at her alma mater in 1964. She published on William Harborne and trade relations between England and the Ottomans in the Elizabethan era, and became a noted authority on the subject.

Skilliter died on 16 September 1985, at the age of 54, and left her library and a significant bequest to Newnham College.