Zoah Hedges-Stocks

Hedges-Stocks was born into a Suffolk family of travelling showmen,^[1] who have worked on fairgrounds since the 1800s.^[2][3] As a child she worked on the dodgems and candy floss stalls of the family fair during the summer season^[4][5] and lived at Leiston, near Aldeburgh, in the winter.^[6]

Despite having disrupted schooldays Hedges-Stocks achieved two As and a B in her A-Levels. Hedges-Stocks matriculated to Murray Edwards College at the University of Cambridge in 2010.^[7] She studied History and achieved a first class degree.^[5][8] During her studies, she edited The Cambridge Student newspaper.^[6]

Hedges-Stocks has commented that: "Among travelling showmen it's often felt that education isn't that relevant, you know what you're going to do – settle down with a nice traveller boy and work on the fairs. A lot of people in my community didn't understand the application process was selective – they assumed you could walk in. This wasn't to do with ignorance it's just not really part of our world. People were interested as it was something new and exciting."^[7]

Her story attracted coverage in the national press and on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.^[2][9] In January 2014, she began a journalism training course with the Press Association. She now works as a freelance journalist, writing for the Barking and Dagenham Post,^[10] The Independent, Newnham Recorder,^[11] and The Telegraph,^[12] among other local and national publications.

She has used her platform as a journalist and Cambridge alumnus to criticise Murray Edwards President, Dorothy Byrne, who planned in 2021 to introduce a series of seminars to teach women about their fertility in response to the falling national birth rate.^[13] Also in 2021, she went viral on Twitter after people misinterpreted her surname and approached her for financial advice, prompting her to tweet "this is not a finance account."^[14]