The sixteen ceremonies are webcast live at:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/graduationvideos
This summer the University is awarding honorary degrees to:
Thomas Angear served with the Brigade of Gurkhas in Malaya and Hong Kong before studying at The University of Nottingham. He graduated with an Honours Degree in Industrial Economics in 1961 and an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University in 1963. He was a Marketing Director at Lever Brothers and Warner Lambert and then for 25 years ran his own mergers and acquisitions company, M & A International. When the company was sold, it comprised more than 30 partner offices in 16 countries. Thomas was a co-founder of The Business Graduates Association, now known as The Association of MBAs. He has served on the University Council and was Chairman of the Campaign Leadership Board for the Golden Jubilee Campaign, which raised £35m over a five-year period. The Angear Visitor Centre in the Lakeside Arts complex is named after him and his wife, Patricia (Mathematics 1960). He was admitted to the University’s College of Benefactors in 2002. Thomas Angear will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 11am on Tuesday July 13.
Andrew Witty became Chief Executive Officer of GlaxoSmithKline in 2008. After graduating from The University of Nottingham with a Joint Honours BA in Economics, he joined Glaxo in 1985, holding a variety of roles in the UK. In 1993, Andrew was appointed Managing Director of Glaxo South Africa and later Area Director for GlaxoWellcome, South and East Africa. He then moved to North Carolina as Vice President and General Manager, Marketing for GlaxoWellcome Inc, the group’s US subsidiary. In Singapore, he led the Group’s operations in Asia as Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific. Andrew was a Board Member of the Singapore Economic Development Board, the Singapore Land Authority and in 2003 was awarded the Public Service Medal by the Government of Singapore. In 2003 Andrew was appointed President of GSK Europe and joined GSK’s Corporate Executive Team. Andrew is President of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, a position he took up on January 1 2010. Andrew Witty will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 3pm on Tuesday July 13.
Brian Moore won 64 caps playing rugby for England, and was a member of the England side that won three Grand Slams, in 1991, ’92 and ’95. In 1991 he was named Whitbread Rugby World Player of the Year. Born in Birmingham in 1962, he studied law at The University of Nottingham and played for Nottingham Rugby Club. After graduation he moved to London to train as a solicitor, subsequently working as a litigation solicitor from 1986 to 2003. At club level he made his name with Harlequins, playing as a hooker. On the international stage he played in three Rugby World Cups including 1991 when England reached the finals. He also took part in two British Lions Tours, to Australia in 1989 and New Zealand in 1993. He ended his club career at Richmond. He is a regular rugby presenter and pundit for the BBC, a sports columnist for the Daily Telegraph and a wine columnist for The Sun. Brian Moore will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 11am on Wednesday July 14.
Nathu (Nat) Puri was born in India and now lives in Nottingham, UK where his business headquarters are located. His main business interests have been in engineering, paper mills, polymer processing and printing. Today he runs the Purico Group of Companies and Associates, manufacturing businesses which employ more than 2,500 people in the UK, Mexico, Germany, China, India, Poland and Hungary. Recently he has been devoting more time to his charitable ‘Puri Foundation’ in the UK and India. He set up the ‘Sanjay Puri Scholarship’ Fund at The University of Nottingham, funded a new 30,000 sq ft. building for his old school in India, and helped to fund 700 One Teacher Schools in Nepal. He also set up the Indian Institute of Advanced Research in Gandinagar, Gujarat, which was formally opened by the President of India in 2006. Through his charities and directly around £500,000 is spent yearly on good causes. Nat Puri is a special Visiting Professor at Nottingham University Business School. Nat Puri will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 11am on Thursday July 15.
Professor Sebsebe Demissew is Professor of Plant Taxonomy and Biodiversity at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also Keeper of the National Herbarium and Leader of the Ethiopian Flora Project. His research interests are in biodiversity and the environment. Over a 15 year period he coordinated the documentation of the Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea, completed in 2009. The project was an international collaboration of many partner institutions, including the University of Addis Ababa, the Universities of Uppsala, Copenhagen, Oslo and Vienna, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the UK and the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA. Professor Demissew has also researched the indigenous use of aromatic and other home garden plants in Ethiopia. He worked on national report for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, on the conservation and development of the Plant Genetic Resources of Ethiopia. He is currently working on a vegetation Atlas for Ethiopia. Sebesebe Demissew will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science at the graduation at 3pm on Thursday July 15.
John Peace is Chairman of Experian, Chairman of Burberry and Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank. He is also Chairman of the Work Foundation and an independent member of the Board of Governors of Nottingham Trent University, after having recently stepped down as Chairman. He is also a member of the British Computer Society; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. John is also Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Nottinghamshire. John Peace will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 11am on Friday July 16.
Dr John E Warnock is Co-chairman of the Board of Directors of Adobe Systems, Inc, a company he co-founded in 1982 with Charles Geschke. Dr Warnock was President of Adobe for his first two years and Chairman and CEO for his remaining 16 years at Adobe. Dr Warnock has pioneered the development of graphics, publishing, web and electronic document technologies that have revolutionised the field of publishing and visual communication. Before co-founding Adobe Systems, Dr Warnock was principal scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre. Prior to joining Xerox, he held positions at Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, and the University of Utah. Dr Warnock holds seven patents, BS and MS degrees in Mathematics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering, all from the University of Utah. Dr Warnock will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science at the graduation at 11am on Tuesday July 20.
Mich Stevenson was born and educated in Nottingham and has enjoyed a long and varied career from working on the first Vulcan Bomber, inventing the ‘Washmatik’ to establishing a property development company. For many years he has been highly involved in regeneration projects in Nottingham, and he was instrumental in the formation of the Lace Market Heritage Trust, to inspire regeneration of projects in the historic Lace Market including the Galleries of Justice and the National Ice Centre. He has served the Boards of the Prince’s Trust, Nottingham Development Enterprise, Profile Nottingham, Nottingham Regeneration, Nottingham Waterside, East Midlands Regional Venture Capital Fund, East Midlands Property Investment Fund and Lark Hill Retirement Village and Sport England. Mich has been made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Nottingham, a Deputy Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, and received an OBE for Services to the Galleries of Justice. He is president of both Newark Air Museum and his local cricket club. Mich Stevenson will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the graduation at 11am on Tuesday July 20.
Roger Lewis graduated from The University of Nottingham with a BMus (Hons) degree in 1976. He has held a number of senior positions in the fields of music, records, radio, television and sport, including Head of the BBC Radio 1 Music Department, Managing Director at EMI Records, Worldwide President of the Decca Record Company, Managing Director and Programme Controller of Classic FM and Managing Director of ITV Wales. Roger is currently the Group Chief Executive of the Welsh Rugby Union and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, having returned home to Wales in 2004. During his tenure at the WRU he has reorganised the group and over the past four years together they have won a Grand Slam, produced record turnover and profitability and invested more in the sport in Wales than at any other time in the WRU’s 130-year history. Roger has also held a number of non-executive positions including Chair of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Deputy Chair of Boosey and Hawkes and a Director of the European Rugby Cup. Roger Lewis will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at the graduation at 3pm on Tuesday July 20.
Ian Shott was the founder, majority owner and CEO of Excelsyn, a fast-growing contract development and manufacturing business, focused on the global pharmaceutical industry. Excelsyn was sold to AMRI for $19m in February 2010. Ian has held leading positions in the international pharmaceutical industry for more than 20 years and has worked in the UK, France, Switzerland and the USA. Ian is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institution of Chemical Engineers. A Chemical Engineering graduate from Imperial College, he became President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in May 2009. He also chairs the Board of the Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences (CELS). He joined the Innovation Strategy Board for the Chemical Innovation–Knowledge Transfer Network in 2007 and chaired the UK’s Innovation Growth Team for Industrial Biotechnology, before joining the government’s Ministerial Advisory Group for Manufacturing Strategy in 2008. Ian was awarded a CBE in 2009. Ian Shott will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Science at the graduation at 11am on Wednesday July 21.
Professor Martin Daunton is a leading historian of modern Britain, and is credited with having bridged the divide between economics and history in his writing and teaching. He read economic history at The University of Nottingham, where he found an interest in urban history which has continued to be a theme in his work, starting with his PhD thesis at the University of Kent and continuing in a study of housing, and the editorship of the modern volume of the Cambridge Urban History of Britain. He taught at the University of Durham and at UCL, where he was Astor Professor of British History, before moving to the University of Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Economic History and, from 2004, Master of Trinity Hall. He has taken on roles such as Consultant Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, President of the Royal Historical Society, and trustee of the National Maritime Museum. He writes and researches on the history of economic and social policy, including two books on the politics of taxation in Britain since 1799 and currently on the economic government of the world since Bretton Woods. Martin Daunton will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at the graduation at 3pm on Wednesday July 21.
Dame Jinty Nelson was born in Blackpool and read History at Cambridge, where she also took her PhD. She taught history for 38 years at King’s College London, specialising in earlier medieval Europe, but with strong interests also in Anglo-Saxon England, and in political ideas, heresy and dissent, and gender, throughout the medieval period. She has published extensively. At KCL, she was Director of the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies (1994-2000), and Co-Chair of Humanities Research Centres. On retirement in 2008, she was made Emeritus Professor of Medieval History. Jinty was made a Fellow of the British Academy (1996) and Vice-President of the Academy from 1999-2001. She served on the Arts and Humanities Research Council History panel and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (2000), a Fellow of KCL in (2002), and President of the Royal Historical Society (2000-2004). She was appointed DBE in 2006 for services to History. Jinty Nelson will receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at the graduation at 3pm on Thursday July 22.
– Ends –
Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham is ranked in the UK's Top 10 and the World's Top 100 universities by the Shanghai Jiao Tong (SJTU) and Times Higher (THE) World University Rankings.
More than 90 per cent of research at The University of Nottingham is of international quality, according to RAE 2008, with almost 60 per cent of all research defined as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. Research Fortnight analysis of RAE 2008 ranks the University 7th in the UK by research power. In 27 subject areas, the University features in the UK Top Ten, with 14 of those in the Top Five.
The University provides innovative and top quality teaching, undertakes world-changing research, and attracts talented staff and students from 150 nations. Described by The Times as Britain's “only truly global university”, it has invested continuously in award-winning campuses in the United Kingdom, China and Malaysia. Twice since 2003 its research and teaching academics have won Nobel Prizes. The University has won the Queen's Award for Enterprise in both 2006 (International Trade) and 2007 (Innovation — School of Pharmacy), and was named ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year’ at the Times Higher Education Awards 2008.
Nottingham was designated as a Science City in 2005 in recognition of its rich scientific heritage, industrial base and role as a leading research centre. Nottingham has since embarked on a wide range of business, property, knowledge transfer and educational initiatives
(www.science-city.co.uk) in order to build on its growing reputation as an international centre of scientific excellence. The University of Nottingham is a partner in Nottingham: the Science City.