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York honours seven for contribution to society

Posted on 20 January 2016

The University of York will this week award honorary degrees to the UK’s senior Law Lord, an acclaimed writer and broadcaster, a leading humanitarian and the manager of the England football team.

Lord Neuberger, Armando Iannucci, Lieutenant-General Roméo A Dallaire and Roy Hodgson are among seven distinguished people to receive honorary doctorates at the University’s graduation ceremonies on 22 and 23 January 2016.

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

Roy Hodgson

Roy Hodgson was appointed manager of the England national football team on 1 May 2012. His 36-year career as a manager began with Swedish club Halmstad in 1976 and England is the fourth national team he has managed. Roy Hodgson had three years in charge of Switzerland, guiding them to the last 16 of the FIFA World Cup in 1994 and qualification for UEFA Euro 96, though he left before the finals. The Swiss hadn’t qualified for a major tournament since 1966. He also spent a year as manager of Finland, lifting them to their highest FIFA ranking, and two years with the United Arab Emirates.

At club level Roy Hodgson managed top clubs such as Internazionale and Udinese, Blackburn Rovers, Malmo, FC Copenhagen and Grasshoppers. After his spell with the Finnish national side he became manager of Fulham in 2007. He took over at Liverpool in June 2010 but had switched to West Bromwich Albion by February 2011, keeping them in a mid-table position in the Premier League that season.

Roy Hodgson speaks several languages and has served on FIFA and UEFA technical study groups. He is the England team’s 13th permanent manager.

Professor Chris Somerville

Professor Somerville is a pioneering plant and microbial biologist. He is currently the Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Energy Biosciences Institute.

A professor at Michigan State University from 1982–1993, Professor Somerville moved to Stanford University in 1994, where he served as Professor and Director of the Carnegie Institution for Science until 2007. Beginning in the late 1970s, Professor Somerville and several colleagues started to organise a community around a suite of experimental methods for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying plant growth and development in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The community grew to more than 16,000 scientists and the research culminated in the first plant genome sequence in 2000. Most recently his research is investigating biofuel production from plant biomass.

A member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Canada, he has received numerous scientific awards, and cofounded six scientific journals and four biotechnology companies. He has published more than 230 scientific papers and patents in plant and microbial genetics, genomics, biochemistry, and biotechnology.

Professor The Lord Darzi of Denham PC, KBE, FRS

Professor Darzi is an Honorary Consultant Surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research. He is also Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and Chair of Imperial College Health Partners.

Leading research in best surgical practice, from innovation in surgery to enhancing patient safety and quality in healthcare, Professor Darzi has published over 800 peer-reviewed research papers. In 2007, he became a peer and was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health. From 2009 to 2013, he was the United Kingdom’s Global Ambassador for Health and Life Sciences and he has been a member of the Privy Council since 2009.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2002, he was knighted for his services to medicine and surgery.

Lieutenant-General The Honourable Roméo A Dallaire OC, CMM, GOQ, MSC, CD (Retired)

The Honourable Roméo Dallaire achieved the rank of Lieutenant General and Assistant Deputy Minister of Human Resources in the Canadian Military. He served as a Canadian Senator from March 2005 to June 2014.

General Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. His experiences there became the subject of the book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Medically released in 2000 due to post-traumatic stress disorder, General Dallaire has since worked as an author, lecturer, and humanitarian.

His most recent book, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers, introduces the child solider phenomenon. In 2007, he founded the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative with the mission to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers globally. General Dallaire is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Grand Officer of the National Order of Quebec, and a Commander of the Order of Military Merit. Among other honours, he has received the United Nations Association of Canada’s Pearson Peace Medal and the Harvard University Humanist Award.

The Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury

Lord Neuberger is a judge and has been President of the UK’s Supreme Court since 2012, covering English, Welsh and Northern Irish law and Scottish civil law. A Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, he became Master of the Rolls in 2009.

Educated at Oxford University, he was called to the Bar in 1974, becoming a Queen’s Counsel in 1987. In 1996, he was appointed High Court Judge in the Chancery Division. Serving as Supervisory Chancery Judge of the Midlands, Wales, Chester and the Western Circuits, he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal and a Privy Councillor in 2004. In 2007, he was made a life peer as Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury. He led a Bar Council investigation into widening access to the Bar, and served on the Panel on Fair Access to the profession.

Chairman of the Schizophrenia Trust from 2003 until 2013, Baron Neuberger is now a Trustee of Mental Health Research UK. He also serves as a Non-Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.

Edmund de Waal, OBE

Edmund de Waal is one of the world’s leading artists. He studied English at the University of Cambridge and ceramics in both England and Japan.

He is best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, which have been exhibited in many museums and galleries around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Britain, the National Museums of Scotland and Wales and most recently, the Royal Academy. His bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, has been published in over 30 languages and won the Costa Biography Award and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.

Edmund de Waal was recently awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction, given annually by Yale University. His latest book, The White Road: A Pilgrimage of Sorts, was published in September by Chatto & Windus. He currently lives and works in London.

Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci is a writer and broadcaster who has written and produced a number of critically acclaimed television and radio comedy shows. The screenplay for his film In The Loop (starring Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander and James Gandolfini) was nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards, and his iconic series for the BBC, The Thick of It, was nominated for 13 BAFTA Awards, winning five during its four-series run.

The latest series of his lauded HBO comedy Veep took home a number of Emmy awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. He is currently adapting a new version of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield for the big screen, as well as a feature film about the death of Stalin. Armando Iannucci has been a regular columnist for The Observer, The Telegraph and Gramophone, and has had a number of books published.

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