Professor Alison Etheridge DBE FRS , Professor of Probability at Oxford’s Department of Statistics, has been appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to Mathematical Sciences. Much of her work focuses on infinite dimensional stochastic processes and their applications. Most recently her central interest has been a collection of mathematical problems arising in population genetics.
Professor Etheridge said: ’This really is a huge honour and it’s taking a while to sink in. It has made me appreciate how lucky I have been to have the support of family, friends, students, and colleagues in and beyond Oxford. And of course, it has been a huge privilege to spend so much of my career in the University of Oxford.’
Professor Nandini Das , Professor of Early Modern English Literature and Culture in the Faculty of English and Tutorial Fellow in English at Exeter College, has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and to Public Engagement.
Professor Das’ works on early modern literature, prose-fiction (chivalric romance, in particular), travel, migration, and cross-cultural encounters, and has published widely on these topics, from their appearance in the writings of major sixteenth and seventeenth century authors such as Philip Sidney, Shakespeare and Cervantes, to the fleeting presence of three Japanese boys in sixteenth century Portuguese-held Goa, India.
Paul Chapman , Senior Fellow in Operations Management at the Saïd Business School, Oxford, has been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services
Paul Chapman is a leading expert on the learning and development of executives, especially those responsible for leading the delivery of major programmes/major projects typically valued at more than $1billion.
Paul is Academy Director for the UK Government’s ’Major Project Leadership Academy,’ MPLA, a one-year, part-time programme for the Major In this role he also designed and directs the ’Sponsoring Major Projects’ programme for UK Government Ministers.
Professor Ros Rickaby FRS OBE , Professor of Biogeochemistry at the Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford, Chair of Geology at Oxford Earth Sciences, and a Professorial Fellow at University College, Oxford, is appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Biogeochemistry.
Professor Rickaby joined the University of Oxford in 2002 and has been a Professor of Biogeochemistry since 2010. For the past 30 years, her research has utilised the past co-evolution of life, environmental chemistry, and Earth’s climate to inform predictions of future change. Her passion for the natural world has been an enduring theme of her work; she has spent time on various conservation projects across Europe, and during her time at Harvard she volunteered a penguin carer in the Boston Aquarium. She has been recognised with prestigious medals from the European Geosciences Union, American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of London, and was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.
Professor Rickaby said: ’I am absolutely gobsmacked, humbled and hugely grateful to receive this recognition from His Royal Highness, King Charles. It has been truly a thrill to uncover the power of the plankton in maintaining a habitable Earth, and to appreciate the importance of planetary-scale thinking for plotting forward pathways. All of my research, and indeed my life, has flourished through the support of, and interactions with brilliant older and younger minds from across the world. I hope that the entire team can share in a warm swell of pride as we continue the push towards a sustainable future.’
Paul Roberts , Archaeologist and Keeper of the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, has been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Archaeology and to Heritage.
Paul Roberts is also a governing body Fellow at Wolfson College. Formerly, he was Roman Curator (1994-2007) and Senior Roman Curator (2007-2015) in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, London, where he curated the exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (2013).
Professor Steve Strand , Professor of Education in the Department of Education, Oxford, and Fellow of St. Cross College, has been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Equality and to Human Rights.
Professor Strand has been Professor of Education at the University of Oxford since January 2013. His research interests are in ethnic, social class and gender gaps in a wide range of educational outcomes (e.g. achievement, progress, special education, exclusion) and he is particularly interested in the interface between equity and school effectiveness. He has worked extensively with Government departments, Local Authorities and individual schools on the analysis of pupil achievement data and school effectiveness.
Professor Strand said: ’I am very grateful to be awarded this honour, which recognises the importance of equity in educational achievement as a key element in developing a fairer and more just society.’
Professor Nigel Biggar , Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, has been nominated for a peerage. He is to be styled the Lord Biggar, of Castle Douglas in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright.
Professor Biggar said: ’The grant of a peerage marks the culmination of a forty-year journey through academe and the church into British public life. I am deeply grateful to have lived to see the day, and to have the opportunity to contribute my ethical expertise to Parliament’s deliberations and the Conservative Party’s intellectual renewal.’
Researchers develop a way to test the ability of red blood cells to deliver oxygen by measuring their shape
