Five outstanding individuals have been awarded Honorary Degrees at the July graduation ceremonies including two Lancaster alumni.
Professor Terry Eagleton DLitt
Professor Eagleton is internationally celebrated as a literary scholar and cultural theorist.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected at the age of 21 to a fellowship of Jesus College, Cambridge, the youngest fellow since the 18th century. He has also been a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford and Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. He is the author of some 60 books, the recipient of 12 honorary degrees and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has lectured widely throughout the world and was a visiting professor at Lancaster University for 16 years.
Sir Kevan Collins DLitt
Sir Kevan was knighted in 2015 for his services to education. He graduated from Lancaster University in 1982 with a degree in Politics before embarking on a teaching career followed by advisory posts in education.
His first national role was in 2003 when he headed up Labour's Primary National Strategy. He became Tower Hamlets' first Director of Children's Services, Chief Executive of Tower Hamlets Council and Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, which was set up to narrow the gap for disadvantaged children. He is currently Executive Vice Chairman at Learning by Questions, the cloud-based classroom feedback app.
Following the election of a new government, he has been appointed to the Board at the Department of Education as a school standards adviser.
Amanpal Bhutani LLD
As CEO of the global internet domain registrar and small business technology provider GoDaddy, Aman has over 20 years of experience in technical, management, and leadership roles.
He gained an MBA from Lancaster University in 1999 and spent nearly a decade at Expedia Inc., where he served as Brand Expedia Group President from 2015-19 preceded by Chief Technology Officer from 2010 to 2015.
He has also held multiple technology roles at JPMorgan Chase and Co. and Washington Mutual, Inc. Before this, he founded and was the technical lead at a start-up and was a senior engineer at a consultancy.
In 2018, Aman was elected to the board of directors of The New York Times Company and currently serves on the Audit and Finance committees.
Professor Sir Robin Grimes DSc
Sir Robin is the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society and Chair of Energy Materials at Imperial College London.
His research focuses on the use of high-performance computing techniques to understand the behaviour of materials for energy applications.
From 2017 to 2021 he was the Ministry of Defence's Chief Scientific Adviser for nuclear science and technology and between 2013 and 2018 he was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
He was knighted in the 2022 New Years Honours List for services to UK resilience and international science relationships at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Yrsa Daley-Ward DLitt
Yrsa Daley-Ward is an award-winning writer and performance poet who grew up in Lancashire and is now based in Los Angeles. She is best known for her debut book, Bone, Penguin Books, books as well as for her live poetry performances.
Her autobiographical novel, The Terrible 2021 (Penguin books), won the Pen Ackerley Prize for memoir. Yrsa co-wrote Black Is King, Beyoncé's musical film and visual album. Yrsa's latest work is The How: Notes on the Great Work of Meeting Yourself.
Yrsa can be found on Instagram at @YrsaDaleyWard and on her online journal/newsletter 'the utter', which goes out to tens of thousands of subscribers twice weekly.
