Jeffrey Epstein Education Lancaster
By Findlay Brown Reporter Share 0 Comments 
3 
Skip to next photo 1/1 Show caption 1/1 0 Comments 
This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today, and has been written by our American colleagues. It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald. A professor who maintained a close friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has had her position with Lancaster University “terminated”.
Countess Nicole Junkermann has also stepped down from a cancer charity that the Prince and Princess of Wales were patrons of as a result of her connections to the disgraced financier revealed in the publicly available Epstein Files.
Junkermann, 50, the German founder of investment fund NJF Capital, was appointed to the role of Visiting Professor in Practice for Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in September 2025.
The termination of her position on February 10 followed an investigation by the Lancashire Telegraph, which revealed Junkermann still held her position at the University despite her relationship with Epstein in the years before and after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a child for prostitution in 2008.
Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice, known as the ‘Epstein Files’, showed 3,745 search results when searching for Nicole Junkermann.
In the exchanges, Junkermann, who also goes by Nicole Brachetti Peretti, wrote to Epstein: “You make me smile, you are in my heart :)”.
Ms Junkermann also wrote in one email: “Thank you, my friend, what would I do without you?”, and in another asks Epstein if he will have a baby with her.
In another, Epstein asks her to find “any girl in their 20s, good family, trustworthy, multilingual” to work on his staff, which Junkermann agrees to.
Communications with Epstein continued until his arrest and subsequent death in 2019.
When Lancaster University were approached for comment on February 6, a spokesperson said: “Nicole Junkermann is not an employee of Lancaster University, and our connection with her will be reviewed in line with the regular and routine appraisals required for all our external connections.”
Four days later, the University wrote to the Lancashire Telegraph saying that: “Nicole Junkermann was not an employee of the University, and her post as visiting professor has been terminated.”
On February 15, we wrote that Junkermann had also stepped down from her position as a trustee of the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, which the Prince and Princess of Wales are patrons of.
Prince William is president of Royal Marsden, the specialist cancer hospital which treated Princess Catherine during her cancer battle.
Through her lawyers, Ms Junkermann has said in a statement that she was "deceived and misled" by Epstein, and she was "manipulated into trusting him" at a time when she claimed to have been "vulnerable".
Despite maintaining a relationship with him following his 2008 conviction for soliciting child prostitution, she said she is "horrified to come to understand his true nature" and her "thoughts are with his victims".
Appearing in the Epstein Files documents does not imply wrongdoing.
Jeffrey Epstein Education Lancaster Share 0 Comments
