³Ô¹ÏÍø

Len Evans
Doctor of the University

Professor Len Evans studied Botany and Marine Biology at the University of Wales Bangor, where he obtained a PhD. From there he moved to Leeds University, where he led a large research group funded by the research councils and industry to study plant biochemistry.

During his time in Leeds he successfully supervised 26 PhD students and published some 200 peer reviewed research papers. For this work he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Wales Cardiff in 1977. Len Evans joined The University of ³Ô¹ÏÍø as Professor of Life Sciences in 1992, and in 2004 took on the role of Registrar where he set up of collaborations between the University and other higher education institutions worldwide, notably with the European School of Economics.

Read the formal address given at the graduation ceremony.

Anthony Green
Doctor of the University

Mr Anthony Green was born in 1939 and studied at the Slade School of Art, where he won the Henry Tonks Prize for drawing in 1960. This was followed by the Gulbenkian Purchase Award in 1963 and the Harkness Fellowship in the USA from 1967-69. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1971, served as a Trustee between 2000-2008, was the Featured Artist at the 2003 Summer Exhibition and is currently Chairman of the RA’s Exhibitions Committee. He is a Fellow of University College, London.

Public collections owning Green’s work include (among many others) the Tate Gallery, V & A, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Setagaya Museum, Tokyo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has had over 100 one-man shows worldwide since 1962. To celebrate the Millennium, his pictorial sculpture, Resurrection, was shown in 15 UK cathedrals.

Read the formal address given at the graduation ceremony.

Baroness Helena Kennedy
Doctor of Laws

Baroness Helena Kennedy is a barrister, broadcaster, and Labour member of the House of Lords. She is an expert in human rights law, civil liberties and constitutional issues and chair of Justice – the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists.

As a barrister she was involved in many of the most prominent cases of the last 30 years including the Brighton Bombing, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. She was the British member of the recent International Bar Association Task Force on Terrorism and chaired an inquiry for the RCP and the RCP and CH into sudden infant death, in the aftermath of miscarriages of justice where mothers were wrongly convicted of murdering their babies. As a life peer she participates in the House of Lords on issues concerned with human rights, civil liberties, social justice and culture.

Read the formal address given at the graduation ceremony.

Lord Lawson of Blaby
Doctor of Science

Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson of Blaby became a Conservative MP in 1974 after a number of years in journalism, including the editorship of The Spectator from 1966-1970. He served in the Thatcher government from 1979 to 1989 as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Energy, and, from 1983, as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), in which capacity he introduced a thoroughgoing programme of tax reform and led the Thatcher government’s pioneering privatisation programme. He entered the House of Lords in 1992.

He has written a number of books, including his political memoirs (The View from Number 11) and, most recently, the best-selling An Appeal to Reason; A Cool Look at Global Warming. An abridged version of his memoirs, with a new concluding chapter, was published in October 2010 under the title Memoirs of a Tory Radical.

In November 2009 he founded a new think-tank, (external link).

Read the formal address given at the graduation ceremony.

Sir Christopher Woodhead (d)

The Lord Kalms Professor of Education

Sir Christopher Woodhead was one of the most prominent figures in the British education system during his career, beginning as an English teacher in the early 1970s and completing a master’s degree in the subject in 1974.

He then moved into teacher education and worked as a tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) teacher training course at the University of Oxford, as well as serving as Deputy Chief Education Officer in Devon.

For three years he served as chief executive of the National Curriculum Council before being appointed as head of the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) in 1994. He held this post until 2000, going on to become a Professor of Education at the University of ³Ô¹ÏÍø whilst remaining outspoken on issues relating to education in his numerous published works. This included columns in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times and his books ‘Class War: The State of British Education’ and ‘A Desolation of Learning: Is this the education our children deserve?’. He further served as chairman of the private schools’ group Cognita from 2004 and was a regular attender of private school conferences.

In 2011 Sir Christopher Woodhead received a knighthood for his services to education.

Notes:

1. Titles correct at time of conferment
2. (d) indicates those Honorary Graduates who are now deceased