New Year Honours 2025: ex-Cambridge v-c made a Knight Grand Cross

A former vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge and a former president of Universities UK are among those recognised in the UK’s 2025 New Year’s Honours List.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, who led Cambridge from 2010 to 2017, is upgraded to a Knight Grand Cross in recognition of his work in medicine and cancer research. Before joining Cambridge, Sir Leszek was chief executive of the Medical Research Council, and he latterly chaired Cancer Research UK.

The son of Polish Second World War-era refugees, Sir Leszek worked on Europe’s first trial of a vaccine for human papillomavirus to treat cervical cancer. He was knighted in 2001.

Another former university leader honoured is Julia Buckingham, who was the vice-chancellor of Brunel University of London until 2021 and also served as president of Universities UK between 2019 and 2021, a period heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. She receives a damehood for services to higher education.

There are also damehoods for Alison Fuller, professor of vocational education and work at UCL; Alison Etheridge, professor of probability at the University of Oxford and president of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences; Stephanie Amiel, professor emeritus of diabetes research at King’s College London; and Ijeoma Uchegbu, a nanoscientist and leading voice on racial equality who in October became president of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Bashir Al-Hashimi, vice-president of research and innovation at King’s College London, is knighted for services to engineering and education, along with Jack Cuzick, professor emeritus of epidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, honoured for his work on cancer prevention.

Richard Williams, the current vice-chancellor and principal of Heriot-Watt University, is appointed a CBE. There are also CBEs for Thomas Rodden, professor of computing at the University of Nottingham; Gillian Dunion, chief commercial officer at the University of Strathclyde; Paul Stewart, professor of medicine at the University of Leeds; Frank Kelly, Battcock chair in community health and policy at Imperial College London; and Rahim Tafazolli, Regius professor at the University of Surrey.

Among those appointed OBEs are Robert Ormerod, deputy vice-chancellor and provost of Keele University, and David Blaney, a former chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, which has now been replaced by a new tertiary sector regulator, Medr.

Others appointed OBEs include Louise Ker, professor of sociology of education at UCL; Shahina Pardhan, founding director of the Vision and Eye Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University; and Gillian Carr, professor of conflict archaeology and Holocaust heritage at Cambridge.

Francis Keenan, mathematics and physics professor at Queen’s University Belfast, is appointed MBE for services to higher education.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com