Professor Toynbee was an archaeologist and leading scholar in Roman epigraphy. In the 1950s, she drove an all-female archaeological expedition through Egypt, Syria and Turkey. She explored countries like Libya, Syria, Romania and Turkey in search of new discoveries, often the only woman on a dig. She taught at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, Reading University and Newnham College, Cambridge. She was reader Emerita at the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of Newnham. She was an Honorary Fellow of Somerville, the Oxford College where she took her undergraduate degree.