Honorary Degrees
Advice to Nominators
- Nominations are sought for individuals of integrity, judgment and exceptional achievement whose acceptance of an honorary degree would add lustre to this university. Conferring of an honorary degree acknowledges an outstanding contribution to scholarship, society, culture and /or civil society.
- The maximum number of honorary degrees that the university can confer in any one year is very restricted (8-10).
- The Advisory Committee attaches great importance to achieving a balance in the composition of candidates (between disciplines, gender, age, nationality and geographic region). As a consequence, successful candidates in the current round may not necessarily be invited to take their degrees for several years.
- Submissions should not exceed two pages of typescript and should provide a brief summary of the career and achievements of the candidate. A comprehensive CV is not required at this stage. It is important to explain why candidates are pre-eminent in their field and why they in particular should be selected at this time. It is also helpful to state if there are reasons why the award of an honorary degree from the University of Dublin would be particularly appropriate.
- Every effort should be made to ensure that contact details for the nominee are up-to-date. However, nominees should NOT be informed that they are being proposed.
- Nominators should check the accuracy of information supplied as it may be used for the orations and for publicity material. Successful nominators may be asked to supply more detailed information prior to their candidate being approved by Board.
- Nominators should be aware that the College is a designated body under the Freedom of Information Acts 1997 and 2003.
- The closing date for receipt of nominations is Friday 30 March 2012 at 5 p.m. Completed forms (WORD) should be sent by email to registrar@tcd.ie or by post to the Registrar’s Office, West Theatre, College.
For a list of honorary degree recipients since 1975 please see
http://www.tcd.ie/local/honorarydegree/recipients/
Recent Recipients of Honorary Degrees
On Thursday 3rd November 2011 at 5 p.m. a special commencement ceremony marking the School of Medicine Tercentenary took place. At this ceremony honorary degrees of the University of Dublin were conferred on the following:
Lord Ara Warkes Darzi of Denham (LL.D.)
Professor Darzi came to Ireland at the age of 16 and studied Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and later was awarded the degree of M.D. of the University of Dublin. He is one of the world's leading surgeons and works at Imperial College London. As a pioneer in the field of minimally-invasive and robot-assisted surgery he has pioneered many new techniques and technologies. He has published seven books and more than 450 peer-reviewed articles. In the previous British government he served as Under-Secretary and spokesperson on Health. He has just been appointed Chairman of his University's Institute of Global Health Innovation.
Charles Dinarello ( M.D.)
Professor Dinarello is one of the world's most eminent medical researchers in the area of inflammatory and infectious diseases and an adviser to our School of Biochemistry and Immunology. A pioneer in the discovery of the key-protein IL-1, which has been the subject of over 60000 publications, he is listed as the world's 4 th most cited scientist during the period 1987-2007. Member of many Academies of Sciences, Governing Bodies and Advisory Boards, he has received in 2010 the Paul Ehrlich prize, the world's most prestigious prize in the field of Infection and Inflammation.
Parveen Kumar (D.Ed.)
Professor Kumar studied Medicine in the UK and spent most of her working life in the British NHS in North and East End of London. Her research is in the area of small bowel disorders and celiac disease, in which she is an international expert, but she is known first and foremost as a committed and distinguished medical educator. She has authored the mandatory textbook for Trinity's medical students, is a household name for generations of medical graduates in Ireland and a powerful role model within the profession. She has been President of the British Medical Association and Chairman of the Medicine Commission UK.
Sir Michael Marmot (M.D.)
Professor Marmot is Research Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL. He has been a pioneer in very influential broad longitudinal studies in the UK on the links between the social environment, social status and psychosocial influences and the risk of cardiovascular and other diseases. Arising from this research he is now an advisor to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. He has won the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology in 2004 and the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008.
Esther M. Sternberg (M.D. )
Professor Sternberg is currently Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behaviour at the US National Institute of Mental Health. Her research has been at the forefront of Neuroimmunology for over 25 years. She has described and analysed the impact of psychological stress upon susceptibility to arthritis and other diseases in over 140 journal articles and numerous books. As an excellent communicator she has deepened the public's understanding of the relationship between stress and illness with a number of popular books arising out of her research such as The Balance Within: The Science connecting Health and Emotions .
Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson (M.D.)
Professor Wallberg-Henriksson has been President of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm since 2004. The Karolinska Institutet is one of Europe's leading Research Institutes for Medicine and our partner in the Eurolife Network of European Universities in Life Sciences. She is also a Member of the Nobel Assembly which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. From 2001 and 2003 she was Secretary General of the Swedish Research Council. Her own research is in the field of diabetes where she has published over 130 scientific articles.