Our honorary graduates

Stephen originally studied as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital, however, he had to pause his studies after breaking his neck in a rugby accident, aged 21. He subsequently qualified as a doctor and completed an MSc and PhD in rehabilitation and disability studies at the University of Southampton.

Having run his own business for 20 years, he moved to London to work for two large FTSE companies. From 1998–2006, he was a Council Member of the University of Southampton, and from 2006–2012, he was a Board Member of the Olympic Delivery Authority, which built the venues for London 2012.

Stephen has been a trustee of numerous charities including Motability, which provides vehicles for 680,000 disabled people, and Leonard Cheshire, which provides care homes for 3,000 disabled people.

He is currently a board member of Network Rail, The Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal Delivery Authority, and Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Stephen is the Vice-Chair of the Rugby Football Union Injured Players Foundation. He has an international reputation for his work in improving the life chances of disabled people. Stephen is married to Rose, and they have four adult sons.

Christine is the inaugural Managing Director of Wessex Health Partners, the Wessex region’s partnership of leading academic institutions and NHS organisations accelerating better health and care through research, innovation and training.

A nursing graduate, Christine completed her Masters by Research with the University of Bristol before moving to University Hospital Southampton, where she has dedicated nearly 20 years to the University of Southampton, Hospital partnership.

Working with University colleagues, Christine’s inspirational leadership has led to Southampton’s research being internationally recognised as world leading, securing significant prestigious multi-million pound awards and delivering world-leading advances in health, including the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a highly respected senior leader, Christine’s work includes advising government and industry bodies including the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, the National Institute of Health Research, the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry and Royal Colleges.

In 2017, Christine was appointed to the Ministerial Industry Steering Group for Commercial Research and founded UKRD, a unique community of expertise and influence representing senior research leaders in the NHS.

After leaving the University of Southampton with a PhD in botany, Gill has spent a varied career working in both the private and public sectors. 

For most of her career, Gill held operational and executive management responsibilities in Accenture LLP.  She worked in many countries and industry sectors.  She was a global executive committee member of Accenture from 1999 to 2006, before spending five years as Director General in the Cabinet Office as Head of the Civil Service Capability Group. 

She is a past President of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and was the Chair of Council and a pro-chancellor of the University of Southampton.  She was awarded a CBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s 2011 Birthday Honours.

Today Gill continues to enjoy a portfolio career.  She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Pennon plc and a non-executive director of Intertek, where she chairs the remuneration committee. She is also the President of the Marine Biological Association. 

Outside work, she lives on Dartmoor with husband David and enjoys walking the dogs, visits with friends, Formula 1, gardening, camper van trips and the occasional opera.

Soprano Juliet specialises in the gnarly edges of contemporary classical music.

A graduate of Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, she began her career singing with renowned British choirs such as Polyphony, Tenebrae, the BBC Singers and the Monteverdi Choir, and was a member of Collegium Vocale Gent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe.

While still at university she founded EXAUDI vocal ensemble with composer/conductor James Weeks and remains a core member of the group. Now recognised as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary music, Juliet maintains a busy schedule performing at classical and experimental music festivals around the world.

She is an active commissioner of new repertoire and has worked particularly closely with composers Laurence Crane, Pascale Criton, Michael Finnissy, Cassandra Miller and Rebecca Saunders.

Juliet is Co-Director of all that dust, a little independent label for new music, and Founder and Artistic Director of the eavesdropping festival in East London. This year she launches VOICEBOX, a bespoke training programme for singers wanting to specialise in contemporary vocal performance.

She was the recipient of a Hartley Residency at Southampton in 2019, which kickstarted a passion for writing about the whole merry business of performing new music.

Justine was the first person in her family to go to university – the University of Southampton – where she studied Business Economics and Accounting.

After a career in industry, Justine became Member of Parliament for Putney. Between 2011 and 2018, Justine served as a UK Cabinet Minister, including as the first-ever comprehensive school-educated Education Secretary, from 2016–18.

Justine put social mobility at the heart of the Department for Education’s strategy through the Social Mobility Action Plan, alongside introducing Opportunity Areas, and Gender Pay Gap reporting. She left Cabinet and Parliament to fully focus on her Social Mobility Pledge campaign mobilising the private and public sectors to work together to drive grassroots change, with the University of Southampton playing a key part of that work.

Margaret is the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice-Chancellor for Marine Science of University of California at San Diego.

She is an ocean biogeochemist and paleoceanographer whose research includes study of ocean carbon cycling and the role of the oceans in climate.

Margaret is currently co-chair for the Decade Advisory Board for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. During 2017 and 2018 she was a US Department of State Science Envoy for the oceans to Latin America and the Pacific. She served as Assistant Director for Geosciences, US National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2000–2007.

She has also served as the President of the American Geophysical Union, President of The Oceanography Society and Chair of the AAAS Section on Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Science. Margaret is a Fellow of all three societies and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Rogier is currently Professor of Virology, specialising in experimental vaccinology, at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam and holds an affiliate faculty position at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City where he spends part of his time.

His research focuses on viral glycoprotein vaccines, in particular those based on native-like trimers. Several of Rogier’s HIV-1 envelope trimers are now in phase I clinical trials as candidate vaccines and Rogier’s proline stabilisation of HIV-1 envelope trimers has inspired COVID-19 vaccines currently in use worldwide.

Rogier studied Medical Biology at the University of Amsterdam and The Rockefeller University in New York. In 2004 he obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam.

He has received several prestigious grants such as the Veni, Vidi and Vici grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and a Starting Investigator grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

He leads and/or participates in various research consortia funded by the EU, NIH/NIAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rogier has (co-)authored more than 250 scientific articles, published in journals such as Nature, Science and Cell.

In 2011, he received the Dutch Prize for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In a top-10 list of “Hottest authors” in HIV/AIDS research 2013–2015, compiled by Thomson Reuters, Rogier shared the top position.

Will Champion is a musician, composer and actor. A multi-instrumentalist, Will is best known for playing drums and backing vocals with the multi-award-winning band, Coldplay. As a founding member of Coldplay, Will has enjoyed almost unparalleled success. From the group’s first album, Parachutes in 2000, to their latest release, Music of the Spheres (released in 2021), Will and the band have sold over 100 million albums; won over 250 awards, including eight Brit Awards and seven Grammy Awards; and toured extensively worldwide.

Will grew up in Southampton and was always immersed in music. He attended Portswood Primary and Cantell Secondary schools – both within a stone’s throw of the University. He took lessons on violin, guitar and piano and then, while at Cantell, played drums in the jazz band. Both of Will’s parents were archaeology academics at the University and his exposure to the Nuffield Theatre and Turner Sims concert hall influenced him heavily during his childhood.

Will completed a degree in Anthropology at University College London. It was during his time at university that he met Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, and Guy Berryman and became the band’s drummer. As a musician and as a person, Will inspires many – both young and established – within the city of Southampton and, of course, here at the University, who know his story.

Stefan is recognised as one of the UK’s leading employment lawyers; his pioneering equal pay litigation has changed the legal landscape.

Stefan, a working- class boy on free school meals, graduated with a LLB Law degree from Southampton in 1982. After training in Bournemouth, he joined trade union solicitors Thompsons in Newcastle, took an LLM in employment law, pioneered claims for redundancy consultation, transfer of undertakings and multi-applicant claims, especially equal pay.

From 2003 to 2013 his own firm, Stefan Cross Solicitors, conducted more than 30,000 successful equal pay claims against more than 100 local authorities in England and Wales, directly and indirectly, recovering more than £2bn for low paid women and men.

Stefan set up Action 4 Equality Scotland Ltd in 2005 to pursue claims in Scotland. He has since been involved in more than 100,000 claims recovering more than £1.2bn leading to the Glasgow Women’s Equal Pay Strike in 2018.

In 2013, he was appointed as an Honorary Queen’s Counsel (QC) in recognition of his contribution to pay equality, one of only a small number of solicitors to be awarded this venerable distinction.

Stefan has maintained a close relationship with the University. In 2018, he launched The Stefan Cross Centre for Women, Equality and Law on Highfield Campus, designed to raise awareness of discrimination against women and girls, and investigate the causes of this discrimination.

CEO, Royal Academy of Engineering
CEO, Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation

Hayaatun has extensive leadership experience in UK and international engineering, innovation, and diversity and inclusion activities. She chairs the UK government’s Business Innovation Forum and the St. Andrews Prize for the Environment, and recently co-chaired with Sir Lewis Hamilton his Commission on improving Black representation in UK motorsport. She is a trustee of EngineeringUK and the Foundation for Science & Technology; a member of the UK government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council; a director of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK; and an advisor to accelerateHER and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. She has been named as one of the ‘Inspiring 50 Women in Tech’ and one of the most influential women in engineering.

She has a Masters in Biochemistry (MBiochem) from Oxford and a PhD from Cancer Research UK/UCL. She is a Fellow of the IET and Honorary Professor at UCL and in 2021 received honorary degrees from UCL and Imperial College and won a Science Suffrage Award. She was made a CBE for services to International Engineering in 2019.

Prior to her current roles, she was Deputy CEO at the Academy and served as Committee Specialist and later Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.

DL FRSE FBA FAcSS

Professor Sir Ian Diamond has been, since August 2018, the National Statistician and Permanent Secretary of the Office for National Statistics. Prior to this role he was, from 2003-2010, Chief Executive of the Economic and Statistics Research Council, and from 2010 -2018, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen. These roles followed almost 23 years at the University of Southampton where he was, variously, Lecturer, Professor, Head of Social Statistics, Dean of Social Sciences and Deputy Vice Chancellor.

Ian is a passionate teacher and researcher who has worked on the analysis of large and complex data sets most notably in the area of population; and on census design and analysis. His research has crossed many disciplinary boundaries and he has worked with a number of government departments both in the UK and internationally.

He is currently chairing the Independent Commission for the Future of College Education and Plan International UK. He has also Chaired British Universities and Colleges Sport, Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales and Edinburgh College of Further Education; and has been or is a board member of WWF UK, UK Research and Innovation, UCAS, Universities UK, Lancaster University and the Iona Cathedral Trust.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin is the professional head of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces and principal military adviser to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence.

He previously served as First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff from June 2019 until early November 2021, during which time he oversaw a full-scale transformation of the Royal Navy, instigated a renewed naval presence around the globe and secured an expanded shipbuilding programme.

Commissioned in 1990, he has served in numerous command and staff appointments, both ashore and afloat, and in command of UK and international forces. Operational tours have included the Iran/Iraq Tanker War, security duties in the Falklands, NATO operations in the Adriatic, countering smuggling in Hong Kong and the Caribbean, and three tours in Iraq – each in command.

A qualified barrister with an MA in International Relations and Defence Studies, he is a graduate of the Higher Command and Staff Course and the London Business School’s Senior Executive Programme, and various international courses, principally in America.

He lives in Hampshire with his wife and four sons, born between 1998 and 2005. He is president of the UK Armed Forces Tennis and Royal Navy Squash Associations, and Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy Sailing Association.