King’s New Year Honours 2023: All those honoured in Cambridgeshire as Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta’s knighthood is elevated
Cambridge professors, a parish councillor, a popular agony aunt, a pioneering scientist and fundraisers are among those named in the King’s New Year Honours List 2023.
The main list recognises the public service of 1,107 people across the UK, including many from Cambridgeshire, as we detail below.
One of the highest honours awarded - the Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire - goes to University of Cambridge economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta.
Meanwhile, there is recognition for serving a village community, helping Ukrainian refugees and changing the face of drug discovery.
Nationally, key members of the England Lionesses football team are honoured for their Euro success in the summer. Squad captain Leah Williamson receives an OBE, while Lucy Bronze, Golden Boot winner Beth Mead, and England women's top international goal scorer Ellen White are all awarded MBEs. A CBE has been awarded to Pat Jennings, for his football and charity service in Northern Ireland. MBEs go to Scotland football captain Andy Robertson for his work with young people and to Chris Kamara for his charity and anti-racism work.
Of those honoured, 673 (60 per cent) are recognised primarily for have undertaken outstanding work in their communities either in a voluntary or charitable capacity and 548 women are recognised - 50 per cent of the total and 45 per cent at CBE level and above.
Here are all those from Cambridgeshire honoured in the list.
Additional reporting: John Downing, Gemma Gardner, Adrian Peel
KNIGHTS GRAND CROSS OF THE ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, the Frank Ramsey professor emeritus of economics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, has had his knighthood elevated.
Originally knighted in 2022 by the Queen for services to economics, he now receives an even higher honour - the Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services to economics and to the natural environment.
Second knighthoods are rare, but he is in good company - Sir David Attenborough received his in June 2022.
An Indian-British economist, Sir Partha led the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity for the government, published last year.
A key message from the report was that “our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: nature”.
The report argued: “We have collectively failed to engage with nature sustainably, to
the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on.”
And it warned: “Our unsustainable engagement with nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations”. It blamed this on “deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure” and stressed that “we need to change how we think, act and measure success”, ensuring that “our demands on nature do not exceed its supply, and that we increase nature’s supply relative to its current level”.
Translating the language of economics to nature in order to influence policy-makers more accustomed to assessing value in financial terms, the report noted: “Our global financial system is critical to supporting a more sustainable engagement with nature. Financial flows devoted to enhancing our natural assets are small and are dwarfed by subsidies and other financial flows that harm these assets. We need a financial system that channels financial investments – public and private – towards economic activities that enhance our stock of natural assets and encourage sustainable consumption and production activities.
“Governments, central banks, international financial institutions and private financial institutions all have a role to play.”
In recognition of his work on the report, Sir Partha was one of five people to be announced as 2022 United Nations Champion of the Earth.
“I’ve really tried to reconstruct economics by placing the human economy as embedded in nature,” he said.
Educated in India and at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Partha’s work has covered areas such as welfare and development economics, the economics of technological change and population, environmental and resource economics. He has explored social capital and the theory of games but ecological economics and the economics of poverty and nutrition have been a key focus.
After a spell teaching at the London School of Economics, he came to the University of Cambridge in January 1985 as professor of economics, although from 1989 to 1992, he spent time at Stanford University, before returning to Cambridge in October 1991.
He served as chair of the Faculty of Economics between 1997 and 2001.
A patron of the population concern charity Population Matters - formerly the Optimum Population Trust - since 2008, he also served from 2011-14 as chairman of the scientific advisory board of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) on Global Environmental Change in Bonn and chaired the Central Government Expert Group on green national accounting for India, which filed its report in 2013.
He serves on the management committee of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
He is a fellow of the British Academy and Royal Society, and foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Heather Hancock, master of St John’s, said: “To be promoted to a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire is a rare distinction, one that fully recognises Sir Partha’s seminal contribution to academic and public life. The Dasgupta Report into the economics of biodiversity is transformative for how we judge the economic health of nations. It places biodiversity at very heart of economics, and it reshapes sustainable growth thinking to fully account for the supply and demand balance in our relationship with the natural world.
“Professor Dasgupta has been a fellow of St John’s College for nearly 30 years, making a much-valued contribution to the scholarly life of the college and as an inspiring teacher of our students. We warmly congratulate him and are delighted to see his extraordinary influence on the direction of economics and the future of life on earth recognised with this elevation in the King’s first New Year Honours.”
COMMANDER OF THE ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE (CBE)
Professor Krishna Chatterjee, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Cambridge, is made a CBE for services to people with endocrine disorders.
Prof Chatterjee is known for discoveries of genetic disorders of thyroid gland formation, the regulation of hormone synthesis and hormone action. These have changed our understanding of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis.
He said: “I am delighted that my contributions to endocrine disorders have been honoured in this way. This also represents the efforts of many scientists and clinical colleagues in Cambridge and internationally, with whom I have worked over the years. Together with the patients participating in our research, we strive to advance knowledge and outcomes in rare hormone disorders.”
Based at the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, Prof Chatterjee’s group is focused on genetic and molecular endocrinology, exploring disorders including resistance to thyroid hormone (RTH) and PPARgamma gene defects associated with lipodystrophic insulin resistance.
Prof Chatterjee showed how deficiency of human selenocysteine-containing proteins leads to a multisystem disease, including disordered thyroid hormone metabolism, and works on translating his discoveries to improve diagnosis and treatment of thyroid conditions.
Dr Graham Gudgin is made a CBE for services to economic development in Northern Ireland.
An honorary research associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School, he said: “I am delighted to receive this honour in recognition of my time in Belfast running the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre, as special advisor to First Minister David Trimble and working with secretary of state Owen Paterson on tax reform for Northern Ireland. It was an honour to be able to use my experience as a member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group to advance economic ideas and practice in Northern Ireland.”
David Halpern is made a CBE for for public service. The chief executive of the Behavioural Insights Team, he read natural sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge and has led the Behavioural Insights Team (unofficially known as the Nudge Unit) since its inception in 2010. He was also appointed as the What Works National Adviser in July 2013. In 2015, he wrote a book entitled Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference.
Anna Radmore is made a CBE for services to the NHS. She was lately the regional director for the East of England of NHS England and NHS Improvement. She has a master’s degree in history from Newnham College, Cambridge, she was an NHS leader with nearly 30 years at board level and more than 17 years as a CEO, and was a director leading the regional response to the Covid pandemic.
OFFICER OF THE ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE (OBE)
Jennet Davis MBE is made an OBE for public service. She was lately a senior adviser at the Cabinet Office on the COP26 Nature Campaign. She lives in Whittlesford and is an advocate, writer and campaigner with a track record of high-level influencing on climate change and nature, delivering positive change on globally significant environmental issues.
Christine Farrugia is made an OBE for public service. She is chief of staff to commissioners at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and lives in St Neots.
Andy Hill is made an OBE for services to affordable housing. He is group chief executive of The Hill Group and founded the firm in 1999.
To mark the family-owned developer’s 20th anniversary, it announced it would donate 200 modular homes for the homeless - a financial commitment of more than £12million - beginning with 20 homes in Cambridge. Hill has been working in partnership with homelessness charity Jimmy’s and Cambridge City Council to install the homes and other cities have since replicated the model.
Read more about Andy in our separate story.
Dr Harren Jhoti, the founder, president and CEO of Cambridge Science Park-based Astex Pharmaceuticals has been made an OBE for services to cancer research and drug discovery.
Dr Jhoti has helped changed how new small molecule drugs are discovered by pioneering the approach of fragment-based drug discovery.
He co-founded Astex in 1999 and the company has gone on to use the approach - which involves screening compounds much smaller in size than previously used - to discover two medicines, Kisqali and Balversal, which are now in use and helping cancer patients.
Dr Jhoti said: “It is a great privilege to receive this honour. This award recognises the contribution that I have made in some small way to the development of Astex, but I share it with all of my colleagues, past and present, and with our collaborators who have helped contribute to the success of our company.
“As scientists, we hope that our discoveries will make a difference to patients, and as entrepreneurs we strive to build sustainable companies to translate those discoveries into significant new medicines.
“At Astex we, as a team, are fortunate to have achieved both goals. The company has also greatly benefited from the growth and development of the UK life sciences sector in the last 20 years into a leading international powerhouse.”
Prof Sir Tom Blundell, a fellow Astex co-founder and board member, said: ‘‘This honour is very well deserved. It underlines Harren’s qualities as an innovator, entrepreneur and leader at Astex. Harren has been the main driver of Astex’s success in developing new medicines using structure-guided fragment-based methods for oncology and diseases of the central nervous system.
Read more about Dr Jhoti in our separate story - and don’t miss our interview with Dr Jhoti in the Cambridge Independent, out from January 4.
Janet Swadling, from Cambridge, becomes an OBE for services to farming and to education.
She was previously chief executive at The Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture (TIAH) and chaired Cambridge Academic Partnership as it merged into United Learning.
Janet spent a decade working for a professional body, the London Stock Exchange and a further education college, before joining the Scottish Agricultural College in 1996 as head of administration, before taking on other roles as SAC merged in 2011-12 with three other land-based colleges to become Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). She was deputy principal and acting chief executive for three years until leaving in 2017.
She helped to found the charity Care Farming Scotland (CFS), has been a trustee director of Citrus Pension Plan and director of National Land Based College Limited.
She has served as a director on the Agri-Skills Leadership Group, which led the agricultural industry’s efforts to establish the Norfolk-based TIAH as the home of skills and professionalism.
Janet has also been an independent director on the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board, a director of Zero Waste Scotland and City of Cambridge Education Foundation and director of the HGCA Pension Plan Trustees.
As chair of Cambridge Academic Partnership - which ran Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, Coleridge Community College, Parkside Community College, Trumpington Community College and The Galfrid School - she was responsible for its merger into the larger United Learning group in 2019.
She is an associate of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.
A qualified Chartered Governance Professional with a certificate in public practice and an MBA from Heriot Watt University, Janet has two grown-up daughters.
MEMBER OF THE ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE (MBE)
Elizabeth (Beth) Blane is made an MBE for services to pathogen genome sequencing. She is a research assistant and laboratory manager at the University of Cambridge in the research group of Sharon Peacock CBE, professor of public health and microbiology in the Department of Medicine and executive director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, and all members of the Peacock Group have been involved in the response to the pandemic.
Dr Isobel Heyman, clinical co-lead on the Cambridge Children’s Hospital project, has been awarded an MBE for services to child and adolescent mental health.
Dr Heyman is consultant psychiatrist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and honorary consultant psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Dr Heyman joined the Cambridge Children’s Hospital team last year as joint child psychiatry clinical lead.
She said: “I am deeply appreciative of this honour. With the group-effort of skilled clinical teams, it is an enormous privilege to care for children and families experiencing the most difficult of times.
“The Cambridge Children’s Hospital project, working to fully integrate physical and mental health care for the first time, means more to me in many ways than anything I’ve done before. Pulling together the treatment of physical and mental health is something that I've been passionate about for my whole career.”
Dr Heyman’s clinical and research work at the interface of physical and mental health is nationally and internationally recognised.
She was named Psychiatrist of the Year in 2015 by the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists and her Psychological Medicine Team at GOSH was awarded CAMHS team of the year in 2018. Dr Heyman’s drop-in mental health project ‘The Lucy Booth’ won British Medical Journal Mental Health Team of the Year award in 2021.
Cambridge Children’s Hospital, which will be built on Cambridge Biomedical Campus, will be the first specialist children’s hospital for the East of England, unique in treating children and young people’s physical and mental health together, under one roof, alongside world-leading research into childhood disease, diagnosis and treatment.
It is a collaboration between Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) and the University of Cambridge.
CPFT’s interim medical director, Dr Cathy Walsh said: “This is a fantastic and well-deserved honour for Isobel, but it also puts the vital work we are doing to design a fully integrated children’s hospital firmly in the spotlight. Treating a child’s mental health and physical health together will lead to far better outcomes, not just for patients but also their families.”
“Dr Heyman said none of the initiatives to put mental health research into clinical practice would have been possible without the collaboration of Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and member of the Cambridge Children’s Hospital team, and Professor Roz Shafran from the Institute of Child Health.
“There is much more to be done to ensure all young people receive the mental health care they need - so it is important and gratifying for child mental health to be recognised in an award.”
Professor Catherine Lee, who is deputy dean for education in the Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care at Anglia Ruskin University, has been made an MBE for services to equality in education.
Prof Lee, a national teaching fellow, has dedicated her career to promoting inclusivity in education and is responsible for the student experience and learning and teaching within the faculty. A former school teacher, Prof Lee has published books on equality, diversity and inclusion in education.
She said: “I’m absolutely thrilled to receive an MBE in the King’s New Year’s honours list. After years of teaching in schools under the homophobic Section 28 law, I feel extremely privileged to have spent the last decade at ARU where, alongside incredible friends and colleagues, I have been able to undertake work in pursuit of greater inclusion in education.
“At ARU, I have been mentored by some inspirational people who have taught me a great deal and have been exceptional role models. I am so very grateful to them for all their support.
“As 2023 marks the 20-year anniversary of the repeal of Section 28, this honour is a timely tribute, not just to me, but to all the teachers and students who were silenced under this law”.
Prof Lee was an advisor on the film Blue Jean, which tells the story of a gay teacher working in a UK school during the time of the Section 28 legislation, which banned teachers from advocating same-sex relationships. The film, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival and is due for release on February 10, was partly based on her own experiences of being a teacher during the late 1980s when the legislation was introduced.
Professor Lee added: “In September 2022, I was fortunate to go to the Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of Blue Jean. I didn’t expect anything to top that, but this honour has been the perfect way to end an unforgettable year.”
June Deidre Sanders, from Ely, the president of Family Lives, a parenting and family support charity in Hatfield, is made made an MBE for services to Charity and Mental Health.
Known as Deidre, she is resident agony aunt on ITV’s This Morning and edited the daily Dear Deidre problem-page in The Sun from 1980-2020. Deidre trained in counselling and, with the help of her counselling team, answered every reader’s problem personally.
MEDALLISTS OF THE ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE (BEM)
Susan Anderson, a founder member of Barton Group Riding for the Disabled, receives the British Empire Medal for services to people with disabilities and to the community in Linton. The group works with under-18s.
Margaret Footner receives a British Empire Medal for services to the community in Brampton, where she is a parish councillor.
She said: “I feel very humble yet deeply honoured to receive this BEM award. I feel that other people try to do as much for their village as myself.”
A member of Brampton Parish Council for 38 years, she continues to sit on a number of committees and said she enjoys “trying to help people”.
“I came to Brampton with my husband, who was in the RAF, and family in 1969,” Margaret recalled. “I joined the RAF thrift shop to get to know and help other families and still work there over 50 years on. I also helped to open a thrift shop at RAF Wyton.”
With a friend, Margaret began the first Neighbourhood Watch in Brampton and she has been a Brampton WI member for more than 50 years, serving on its committee. The WI paid for the village’s sign, which Margaret’s husband, Alan, designed.
Margaret was also a member of the emergency response group WRVS, a member of the doctor’s surgery ALBRAM for seven years and remains on the committee of Brampton Historical Society, of which she has been a member for more than two decades.
“I worked at Brampton Infant School for 39 years and was a school governor for 12 years,” she said. A member of the parish church, she delivered the monthly parish news magazine for more than 30 years.
“Brampton is a lovely, friendly village and I’m so happy to be part of the village life,” Margaret added.
James Hems, who lives in Clay Farm, Trumpington, has been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to the community in Cambridge during Covid-19.
He organised support groups during the pandemics, organising socially distanced dog walks and training, setting up a new parent support group and organising for the visit of food trucks to visit his community, which then donated to foodbanks.
Cambridge-born James has continued to help build a sense of community in the new development, launching local WhatsApp groups, and getting involved in Camcycle and the Stolen Bikes in Cambridge group.
He said: “It was very much a surprise and I had to double-check the authenticity of the correspondence. After that it was a case of thinking about all the other people who are involved in the community and how they are equally deserving of such recognition.
“I’m lucky enough to have been born at The Rosie, Addenbrooke’s. Although I’ve lived and worked across the UK and EU I returned to Cambridge in 2012 to care for my father. He was diagnosed with dementia).
“That prompted me to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Research UK organisation, which is headquartered just outside Cambridge. The work they do is instrumental in the fight to end dementia.”
James is also active in the Trumpington Residents Association (TRA) and Trumpington Meadows Delivery Action Group (TMDAG), which have been instrumental in enabling the new developments to grow into a community neighbourhood that has since integrated with the rest of Trumpington.
He added: “Having experienced bike theft, like so many others in Cambridge, I dove into the world of Camcycle with Roxanne de Beaux, executive director, and Stolen Bikes in Cambridge, with Omar Terywall. All lost, stolen and reclaimed bikes that didn’t find a home I’ve since donated to OWL bikes, a charity who only this year had their entire inventory stolen - most upsetting given the vital support they provide in skills training and employment experience as a springboard for those it serves onto future long-term opportunities and independence.
“In the last few years community collectiveness has been essential. With that there has been the launch of super-local WhatsApp groups: Clay Farm Food, Garden, Info and Safety which has supported people in all sorts of ways. These groups and the people involved in with them I feel most proud of.
“Clay Farm Food has worked with local food trucks to serve their delicious meals, made from locally-sourced ingredients, to the community - with proceeds from their sales then going to help fund the local Trumpington Foodbank, organised by TRA.
“Clay Farm Garden has provided local residents, especially those in properties with small or no gardens, with young families, or where horticulture is a great social mobiliser to get outdoors, involved and meet others.
“Clay Farm Info has become the go to place for community fact sharing, from opening times of local services to highlighting community events - all of which perpetuates the concept that ‘unity build CommUnity’.
“Clay Farm Safety is used in situations no-one wants to have to use but ensures no-one is alone when they experience personal threats, burglary or other criminal activities upon them. The group helps to raise safety awareness and collective safety - much like a the neighbourhood watch but for the 21st century.
The Trumpington Dogs WhatsApp group helped people with dogs, including puppies, particularly during Covid by ensuring that dogs had exercise and socialisation while vulnerable individuals stayed as safe as possible thanks to dog socials in the park, with adults respecting social distancing rules in place at the time.
More recently, James has become a governor of Trumpington Community College.
“Its transformation delivered in recent years by the relatively new senior leadership team has been nothing short of inconceivable,” he said.
“I hope sharing these wonderful places and how they helped me might inspire others to get involved. It also highlights that none of what I did was an individual act but merely the result of many individuals’ collective actions.”
Louenna Hood, from Dullingham, receives a British Empire Medal for services to refugees after raising £174,000 via JustGiving to support children and families fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion. She helped to organise the delivery of five container loads of essentials directly to people in need. Louenna is a qualified nanny and maternity nurse behind Nanny Louenna, often appearing in the national press to offer advice. She created the Louenna App as a 24/7 nanny in your pocket.
