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University of York honours nine

Posted on 6 July 2007

The University is to award honorary degrees to one of Britain’s leading mountaineers, the Director-General of the CBI, a leading figure in social housing in the UK, and a founder member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.

They will be among nine people to receive honorary doctorates at the University over the graduation period (11, 12 and 13 July).

The University confers honorary degrees each year on people who have made a significant contribution to society. Honorary graduates are selected from nominations by members of the University and often have links with departments or are alumni.

Alan Hinkes OBE

Alan Hinkes is the first Briton and the 13th person to climb the world’s 14 highest mountains - those over 8,000 metres. He is one of only 12 people alive who have achieved this feat - and many have perished in the attempt. Alan Hinkes began his mountaineering career while at Northallerton Grammar School, North Yorkshire. He progressed to the Alps with ascents of many difficult mountains including the North Face of the Eiger, before graduating to the Himalaya. He works for outdoor company Berghaus, and is a writer and lecturer. He was awarded an OBE in the 2006 New Year’s Honours and is an honorary citizen of Northallerton. He is involved in charity work for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Outward Bound, as well as working closely with the British Mountaineering Council.

Gordon Horsfield

Gordon Horsfield joined Drax Group plc as chairman in 2003 and oversaw the listing of the company two years later. He served 34 years with Price Waterhouse UK before its merger with Coopers and Lybrand in 1998. Much of his professional career was spent as a corporate recovery specialist. On 1 June, Gordon Horsfield took over as chair of Partnerships UK, which works alongside the public sector to help to develop and implement more efficient Public Private Partnerships. He is a former member of York Minster Finance Committee and is on the advisory committee to the Abbot of Ampleforth, as well as Chair of Council, the University’s governing body.

Richard Lambert

Richard Lambert had a distinguished career as a financial journalist during a 35-year career on the Financial Times, serving as editor from 1999 to 2001. He contributed throughout his career to the working of the country’s financial institutions, most notably as a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. In 2002, he was asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lead a review of University-Business interaction. The Lambert Report has been a major influence on subsequent policy for science, innovation, higher education and business. Richard Lambert is a member of a strategy group to advise on the future of Science City York, and chaired the inaugural Science Cities National Workshop in September 2005. Since July 2006, he has been Director-General of the CBI.

Dame Jocelyn Barrow

Dame Jocelyn Barrow was a founder member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD). At Furzedown College and the Institute of Education, London University, in the 1960s, she pioneered multicultural education. She was the first black woman Governor of the BBC and Founder and Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Council. She was Governor of the Commonwealth Institute, Council Member of Goldsmith’s College, University of London, and Vice-President of the United Nations Association. She is National Vice-President of the Townswomen’s Guild and was instrumental in the establishment of the North Atlantic Slavery Gallery at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool. In 1972, she was awarded the OBE for work in education and community relations, and 20 years later she was made a DBE for her work in broadcasting, and as UK member of the EU Social Economic Committee.

Professor Hermione Lee CBE

Hermione Lee is Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature and Fellow of New College, Oxford, and is a teacher, biographer, critic and broadcaster. She began her career as a lecturer in Williamsburg, Virginia, and at the University of Liverpool, and was Professor of English at the University of York from 1977 to 1998. She has written books on Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen and Edith Wharton. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Arts Council Literature Panel. Her biography of Virginia Woolf, published in 1996, was the winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Award and was chosen as book of the year by the New York Times Book Review. She was awarded a CBE for services to literature in 2002.

Lord Richard Best

Lord Best has been a leading figure in social housing in the UK for more than 30 years. He has been Director of both the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust since 1988. He was Director of the British Churches Housing Trust from 1970 to 1973, and with the National Federation of Housing Associations for the next 15 years. He is Chair of the Westminster Housing Commission and has served as a Rural Development Commissioner, a member of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations’ Advisory Council, and is President of the Local Government Association. Lord Best was a member of the Minister of Local Government’s Sounding Board from 2002 to 2005. He was made an OBE in 1988, and was created a life peer in 2001.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins has chaired the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence since its formation in 1999. He is also Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and was previously Chair of the Committee on Safety of Medicines from 1993 to 1998, after serving for five years as its vice-chair. He is an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has been Ruth and Lionel Jacobson Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Newcastle since 1973. His many awards include the Lilly Medal from the British Pharmacological Society, the Dixon Medal from the Ulster Medical Society and the Paracelsus Medal from the University of Amsterdam. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Professor Bill Gillespie

Professor Bill Gillespie was the founding Dean of the Hull York Medical School (HYMS) which opened in March 2003. He was previously Dean of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He trained and later worked in Edinburgh. As the first professor of Orthopaedic Surgery in the Christchurch School of Medicine and the University of Newcastle (NSW), Professor Gillespie developed programmes for new medical schools and in encouraging doctors to develop teaching roles alongside their clinical duties. Professor Gillespie has been Coordinating Editor of the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Injuries Collaborative Review Group since 1995. He retired as Dean of HYMS at the end of 2006.

Professor Lord Plant of Highfield

Lord Plant of Highfield has made a major contribution to political studies, both as a writer and through his political life. He is Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at King’s College, London, where he read Philosophy in the early 1960s. He has taught at the universities of Manchester and Southampton and was Master of St Catherine’s College, Oxford, from 1994 to 2000. He chaired the Labour Party Commission on Electoral Systems between 1991 and 1993, and the Fabian Society Commission on Taxation and Citizenship. He was created a life peer in 1992 and was Labour’s spokesman on Home Affairs in the Lords until 1996. A former chair of the Political Studies Association, Professor Lord Plant co-founded the Journal of Medical Ethics.

ENDS