The Cambridge Colleges Hospitality Scheme was set up to offer college hospitality for one month each summer to postdoctoral academics from eastern Europe, thus providing one of the few opportunities for such scholars to benefit from Western facilities and contacts. Colleges provided accommodation and meals while various external funding bodies provided research expenses and travel costs. The scheme began as an offshoot of a similar scheme which had begun in Oxford in 1981 and which was originally mainly for Polish scholars. From 1991, the scheme broadened to include Hungary and Czechoslovakia (from 1995, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In 1996 it was extended to the Baltic States and in 1997 to the Ukraine, and from about 2004 to some middle eastern countries. By 1995, twenty-three colleges were offering thirty places annually. From then until 2000 efforts were made to persuade additional colleges to join the scheme, including Corpus Christi, New Hall, Wolfson, Churchill, Lucy Cavendish and Fitzwilliam. Until 1987 the scheme had been funded via Oxford, but in 1988 the Cambridge committee applied directly to the British Council for research expenses and to the Open Society and the Soros Foundation for travel expenses. Key figures on the committee in the early years were George Gomori, Mara Kalnins, Marie Ferguson-Smith and Margaret Klinowska. Lord Lewis (Warden of Robinson College) became Chairman of the Committee in 1994. Anne Lonsdale joined the Committee in 1996 and remained actively involved in the administration of the scheme throughout her period of office as President of New Hall, assisted successively by her secretaries Liz Pearson and Sarah Greaves. On Anne Lonsdale's retirement from the Presidency in 2008 administration of the scheme and some of the remaining paperwork passed to Robinson College. [Much of the above information was derived from NHAR 1/3/2/1/2 below.]