William Hague, Chancellor of Oxford, conferred nine honorary degrees in today’s Encaenia ceremony. The recipients include former New Zealand Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern; actress and theatre director Adjoa Andoh MBE; and literary critic and host of Finding Your Roots Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The other honorands are tennis player Billie Jean King; electronics engineer and inventor of blue LED Shuji Nakamura; Nobel Prize-winning economics professor Daron Acemoglu; Birmingham Royal Ballet director Carlos Acosta CBE; biochemist Katalin Karikó, whose mRNA research contributed to the COVID-19 vaccines; and former CEO of GSK Dame Emma Walmsley.
The procession of recipients and senior members of the University walked from Exeter College to the Sheldonian Theatre, where the ceremony took place, around 11.20am. Earlier this year, the Chancellor conferred eight honorary degrees in a Special Honorary Degree Ceremony intended to commemorate the beginning of his Chancellorship.
Encaenia takes place on the Wednesday of ninth week of each Trinity term, and sees the conferral of honorary degrees on recipients selected by the Congregation, a body of over 5,000 staff and academics. The University website describes these awards as “the most prestigious awards the University can confer”. The ceremony is traditionally followed by a lunch, hosted by All Souls College for over 100 years, and a garden party. It has been a constant feature in the Oxford calendar since the 1470s.
Dame Jacinda Ardern GNZM is one of the most prominent honorands this year. As the Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, she was praised by international media for her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, Ardern joined the Blavatnik School of Government as a member of the World Leaders Circle, alongside former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Adjoa Andoh MBE is another recognisable face among the recipients. An actress from Bristol, she has performed with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In recent years, she has played Lady Danbury in both Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, the latter of which included a wedding scene filmed in Merton College Chapel.
Dame Emma Walmsley DBE is the only recipient to also be an alumna of the University. She studied for an MA in Classics and Modern Languages at Christ Church, later working at L’Oréal. From 2016 to 2025, she was the CEO of GSK, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and is the first woman to lead an international pharmaceutical company.
Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is one of the several Americans awarded today. An academic at Harvard University, he rediscovered the manuscripts of the earliest known African-American novels and is the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Professor Gates has also built a successful television career as the host of Finding Your Roots, in which celebrities are presented with their ancestral histories.
Past notable honorands include Nelson Mandela (1996), Dame Judi Dench (2000), and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (2001).
