University of Warwick Honorary Degrees announced for July 2006
The University of Warwick has announced tthat it is to award
honorary degrees to 8 people in its July degree ceremonies
including CBI chief Digby Jones and leading Hong Kong democracy
campaigner The Honorable Martin Lee Chu Ming. Biographies of each
honorary graduand and the degree they will be awarded follow below.
A release detailing photo and interview opportunities on the day
each will person will receive their degree will be issued nearer to
the time.
Sir Nicholas Stern Doctor of Science (Hon DSc) Monday 10th
July
Sir Nicholas is internationally known for his work in economic
development; interestingly, he is also known for pioneering applied
work in criminology. He became Professor of Economics at the
University of Warwick in 1978, and produced innovative work on tax
reform in India and Pakistan. While at Warwick he spent a year's
leave with Christopher Bliss in the Indian village of Palanpur, and
the result was a world famous microeconomic study of household
behaviour in a peasant context. He moved to LSE in the mid 1980s.
He has taught and carried out research at many other places
including Oxford, MIT, the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, the Indian
Statistical Institute in Bangalore and Delhi, and the People's
University of China in Beijing.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Econometrics
Society, and an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
He then moved into the arena of policy advice. He became Chief
Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
which helped reconstruct post-communist Eastern Europe in the Mid
1990s. In 2000 he moved on to the World Bank in Washington where he
was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President and was largely
responsible for refocusing the Bank's strategy towards alleviating
poverty.
In 2003 he returned to the UK to join the Treasury. He is
responsible for government fiscal policy and head of the Government
Economic Service, a body of more than 1,000 professional
economists, many of them Warwick graduates.
He continues to be driven by a concern for poverty and is now
serving on the Secretariat of the Commission for Africa as Director
for Research and Policy. His contributions and experience therefore
span the continents: from Asia through Eastern Europe to
Africa.
Professor Yuri I Manin Doctor of Science (Hon DSc) Thursday
13th July 2006
Educated at Mechanics and Mathematics faculty of Moscow State
University and at the Steklov Math Institute of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences. He quickly became a Professor at Moscow University in
1965 aged just 28. From 1992-1993 he was a Professor at MIT. From
1993 to 2005 he was Director of the Max Planck Institut fuer
Mathematik. He also holds the position of Professor, Northwestern
University, Evanston, US (from 2002) and from 2005 has been a
Professor emeritus of the Max Planck Institute.
His many awards include: Moscow Mathematical Society Award 1963,
Lenin Prize 1967, the Brouwer Gold Medal 1987, Frederic Esser
Nemmers Prize 1994, the Rolf Schock Prize 1999, the King Faisal
Prize for Mathematics 2002, and the Georg Cantor Medal of the
German Mathematical Society 2002 He is a Member of: the Academy of
Sciences Russia, Academy of Natural Science Russia, Royal Academy
of Sciences the Netherlands, Academia Europaea, Göttingen
Academy of Sciences, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Academia
Leopoldina, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Académie
des sciences de l'Institut de France.
His research work is in number theory, algebraic geometry and
theoretical physics, psycholinguistics, and the history of culture.
He has written over 200 articles and 10 books.
Mr Max Stafford-Clark Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) Tuesday
11th July 2006
He founded Joint Stock Theatre group in 1974 following his Artistic
Directorship of The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. From 1979 to 1993
he was Artistic Director of The Royal Court Theatre. In 1993 he
founded the touring company, Out of Joint.
His work as a Director has overwhelmingly been with new writing,
and he has commissioned and directed first productions by many of
the country's leading writers. For Out of Joint these have
been The Queen and I by Sue Townsend, The Libertine by
Stephen Jeffreys, The Break of Day by Timberlake Wertenbaker, The
Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry, The
Positive Hour by April de Angelis, Shopping and
Fucking by Mark Ravenhill, Blue Heart by Caryl
Churchill, Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry, Our
Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Drummers by
Simon Bennett, Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill,
Rita, Sue and Bob Too by Andrea Dunbar and A State
Affair by Robin Soans, Feelgood by Alistair Beaton,
Sliding with Suzanne by Judy Upton, Hinterland by
Sebastian Barry, A Laughing Matter by April De Angelis,
Duck by Stella Feehily, The Permanent Way by
David Hare, a site-specific, Africa-set production of Shakespeare's
Macbeth, Talking to Terrorists by Robin Soans and
O Go my Man by Stella Feehily.
New writing directed for Joint Stock includes Fanshen,
The Speakers (both with William Gaskill), Light
Shining In Buckinghamshire and Cloud Nine. For The
Royal Court: The Arbor, Operation Bad Apple, Top Girls, Rita
Sue And Bob Too, Falkland Sound, Tom And Viv, Rat In The Skull,
Aunt Dan And Lemon, Serious Money, Our Country's Good, Icecream, My
Heart's A Suitcase, Hush and Three Birds Alighting On A
Field.
In addition he has directed The Seagull, The Pope's Wedding,
The Recruiting Officer and King Lear for the Royal
Court; A Jovial Crew; The Wives' Excuse and The
Country Wife for The Royal Shakespeare Company; and Road,
The Man of Mode, She Stoops to Conquer, Three Sisters and
Macbeth for Out of Joint. He directed David Hare's The
Breath of Life for Sydney Theatre Company in 2003. He has
also directed for The Abbey Theatre, Dublin and Joseph Papp's
Public Theatre, New York. His book Letters to George was
published in 1989. The University's Arts Centre, Warwick Arts
Centre has hosted many of his productions.
The Honorable Martin Lee Chu Ming Doctor of Laws (Hon
LLD)
Wednesday 12th July 2006
Lee is a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, and has
been a constant and forthright advocate of the need to nurture
democracy in Hong Kong. He was the founding chairman of the
Democratic Party (which he chaired from 1994 to 2002) and also
previously chaired Hong Kong's first political party - the United
Democrats of Hong Kong - from its foundation in 1991.
His tireless democracy campaigning has been recognized and honored
by a number of international organizations. In 1995 he was awarded
the "International Human Rights Award" by the American
Bar Association, in 1997 he was presented with the "Democracy
Award" of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy in 1997,
in 2000 he became the first non-European to receive the
"Schuman Medal" from members of the European Parliament
and in 2004 he was presented with Rutgers University's
"William J Brennan Human Rights Award".
Lee was born in Hong Kong and obtained his undergraduate BA degree
at the University of Hong Kong. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn in
London. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1979, and was the
Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association from 1980 to 1983. He was
a member of the Basic Law Drafting Committee from 1985 to 1989. He
also chaired the Hong Kong Consumer Council from 1988 to
1991.
Professor Natalie Zemon Davis Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt)
Thursday 13th July 2006
Natalie Zemon Davis is a celebrated cultural historian
-particularly of early modern France. Her main interests are in
social and cultural history, especially of those previously ignored
by historians. She makes use of numerous sources such as judicial
records, plays, pamphlets, notarial records, tax rolls, books and
welfare documents. She is a leading proponent of cross-disciplinary
history, which combines history with disciplines such as
anthropology, art history, ethnography and literary theory. She is
best known for serving as the technical advisor on the 1982 French
film Le retour de Martin Guerre (known in English as
The Return of Martin Guerre); in 1983 she wrote a book of
the same name with her interpretation of the story of Martin
Guerre.
Her most recent books are The Gift in Sixteenth-Century
France (2000); Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical
Vision (2000), and L'histoire tout feu tout flamme.
Entretiens avec Denis Crouzet (2004). She is currently
completing a book on the subject of cultural mixture, entitled
Trickster Travels: A Muslim between Worlds in Early Modern
Times.
She is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History emerita at
Princeton University and is currently adjunct professor of History
and Medieval Studies and a Senior Fellow in the Centre for
Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. She lives in
Toronto with her family.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an
academic advisor to the Guggenheim Foundation and Corresponding
Member of the British Academy. She has been president of The
Society for French historical Studies and in 1987 was president of
the American Historical Association. She was also until recently
first vice-president of eth International Congress of Historical
Sciences
Sir Digby Jones Doctor of Laws (Hon LLD) Friday 14th July
2006
Sir Digby Jones was born in Birmingham in 1955. After some time in
the Royal Navy, he started his career with corporate law firm Edge
& Ellison in 1978, becoming a partner in 1984.
It was in corporate finance and client development that he made his
name and he was responsible for developing the firm's London
presence and establishing its representation in many European
countries and the US. He was made Deputy Senior Partner in 1990 and
Senior Partner in 1995.
In 1998 he joined KPMG as Vice-Chairman of corporate finance. He
became Director-General of the CBI on 1 January 2000 to serve a
five-year term of office. In September 2003 this was extended at
the request of CBI members to seven years.
Among his many positions he is a Director of Business in the
Community (2000), a member of the Advisory Board of the
Commonwealth Education Fund (2000); a Director of Königswinter
(2003), a Commissioner on the Commission for Racial Equality (2003)
and President of the Tourism Alliance (2001). He is also a member
of the National Learning and Skills Council (2002) and a member of
the Skills Alliance (2002), a Fellow of the RSA (2001), a Fellow of
the Royal Institution (2002), and a Companion of the Institute of
Management (2000).
He is a Vice-President of UNICEF, Chairman of the Cancer Research
UK Ambassadors, President of the Diversity Works a Vice-President
of Birmingham Hospice, a Vice-President of Weston Spirit - working
for a future for disadvantaged young people in Britain's cities,
President of the Ambassadors for the West Midlands region, a member
of the Yorkshire Society and a Freeman of the City of London.
His also has close associations with a range of charities and has
personally raised significant sums for a number of them. He was
appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2005 New Year Honours
List.
Mr G Moorhouse Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) Friday 14th
July 2006
Geoffrey Moorhouse has been described as 'one of the best writers
of our time' (Byron Rogers, The Times), 'a brilliant historian'
(Dirk Bogarde, Daily Telegraph) and 'a writer whose gifts are
beyond category' (Jan Morris, Independent on Sunday).
He has said that from the age of thirteen he wanted to write:
"when I first discovered it, the only ambition I had was to
write for the Manchester Guardian. In due course I got a job there.
I was enjoying myself enormously and eventually became the Chief
Features Writer".
He is the author of over 20 books, which have won prizes and been
translated into several languages. He was elected fellow of the
Royal Geographic Society in 1972 and in 1982 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His To the
Frontier won the Thomas Cook Award for the best travel book of
its year 1984. He has recently concentrated on Tudor history,
notably with The Pilgrimage of Grace and, in 2005, Great
Harry's Navy.
In his book "The Diplomats", Geoffrey Moorhouse
famously tells how in December 1948 a reporter on a Washington DC
radio station telephoned Ambassadors in the US capital and asked
what each would like for Christmas. He recorded their replies for a
special programme on the future of the human race.'Peace throughout
the world,' the French Ambassador demanded. 'Freedom for all people
enslaved by imperialism,' his Soviet counterpart countered. And so
it went on. Ambassadors asked for democracy for Christmas, an end
to poverty, the banning of the atom bomb until at last the reporter
called Sir Oliver Franks, the British Ambassador to the United
States of America.'What do you want for Christmas, Sir
Oliver?'
'It's very kind of you to ask,' a polite voice replied. 'I'd quite
like a box of crystallised fruit.'
Professor N Mann Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) Friday 14th
July 2006
The Dean of the University of London's School of Advanced Study,
Professor Nicholas Mann, is also Vice-President and Foreign
Secretary of the British Academy, and was for eleven years Director
of the Warburg Institute before succeeding Professor Terence
Daintith as Dean in January 2002. His research has for many years
concerned Petrarch and Italian humanism, but has also more recently
touched on Warburgian matters.
Since October 2003 he has also been also Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the
University of London with special responsibility for its
Information strategy.
His books include Travels with Francesco Petrarca, by G.
Frasso and G. Billanovich, Petrarch Manuscripts in the British
Isles, Petrarch , a Concordance to Petrarch's Bucolicum
Carmen (Quaderni Petrarcheschi, 2) (1984),
Pétrarque: les voyages de l'esprit, Grenoble,
Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, edited with
Michael Mallett (1996), and Medieval and Renaissance
Scholarship.
For further details please contact:
Peter Dunn, Press & Media Relations Manager
University of Warwick, Tel: 024 76 523708
07767 655860
Email: p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk
PR45 June 2006