A former Archbishop of Canterbury, a leading film producer, and the founder of the BBC Asian Network in the West Midlands, are among those to receive honorary degrees from the University of Warwick at its 2016 summer graduation ceremonies.

Director and screenwriter Oliver Stone has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick at a special ceremony today (11 March 2016)

Researchers from the Multicultural Shakespeare in Britain Project at the University of Warwick are set to launch a new online Shakespeare performance database on 15 Jan 2016 that holds three years of research which documents and contextualises BAME performers’ crucial yet undervalued contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare - our greatest cultural symbol of ‘Britishness’.

The University of Warwick has announced today, Wednesday 16th of December 2015, that it will award honorary degrees to six people at its winter degree ceremonies which will run from 20th to 22nd January 2016. Those to be honoured include:

• Radio and TV cleric The Reverend Richard Coles
• Warwickshire born science fiction, fantasy, & climbing writer M John Harrison
• Renowned critic of Latin American fiction Professor Gerald Martin
• Leading dyslexia researcher Professor Margaret Snowling
• Olympic rowing coach Mr Paul Thompson MBE
• Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Teach First Mr Brett Wigdortz OBE

The Warwick community is saddened by the death of Dr Oliver Sacks who was a much loved Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick who drew capacity crowds for every lecture and seminar he gave on our campus. Warwick also conferred on him the degree of Honorary Doctor of Science in January 2014.

A TV chef, a pioneer of Coventry’s musical heritage and a polar explorer and will be helping to highlight the contribution the University of Warwick has made at home and abroad since it was established 50 years ago.

Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy gave a podcast interview yesterday (14 July) at the University of Warwick immediately after receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Letters. Speaking after picking up the University of Warwick award – just a day after his highly-charged interview with Jeremy Corbyn – the TV broadcaster also discussed his self-critical nature and how he consistently reflects on his most recent interviews.

In the week of the Big Brother final we publish this podcast interview with Sir Peter Bazalgette who brought the Big Brother TV format to the UK. The interview was recorded on the occasion of him receiving his Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Warwick. He reflects on how Big Brother was predicted by the 1968 television play “The Year of the Sex Olympics” and how class conflict popularised Big Brother in the UK.

Distinguished Warwick alumna, Baroness Amos, will deliver the inaugural VandeLinde Lecture in New York on 3rd November. Baroness Amos is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and will deliver the lecture at BBC Worldwide, New York. The new lecture series has been established to honour Professor David VandeLinde, who served with distinction as the fourth Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick.

Author of the New York Times best-seller Predictably Irrational, and named by Fortune Magazine as one of the ten new gurus you should know about, Dan Ariely will discuss his inclination towards the study of human behaviour as well as the recent publication of his latest book, The Upside of Irrationality.