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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