Dame Frances Cairncross is a British economist, respected journalist and academic. She is a senior fellow at the School of Public Policy, UCLA and formerly chaired the executive committee of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. From 2004 to 2014, she was the Rector of Exeter College, Oxford. From 2015 to 2020, she was chair of the Court of Heriot-Watt University. In 2019, she chaired the UK’s independent review into the future of quality news provision; ‘The Cairncross Review’ considered the sustainability of the production and distribution of high-quality journalism.