Oxford announces honorary degrees for 2013

The degrees will be awarded at Encaenia, the University's annual honorary degree ceremony, on Wednesday 19 June 2013.

Degree of Doctor of Civil Law, honoris causa:

Honourable Andrew Li Kwok Nang, GBM, CBE, LLM Cambridge, is the former Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, having been appointed as the first Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997. He has also served as the Deputy Chairman of the Inland Revenue Board of Review, the Securities Commission, the Law Reform Commission, the Standing Committee on Company Law Reform, the Banking Advisory Committee, and the Judicial Services Commission. A recipient of the Grand Bauhinia Medal of the Hong Kong Government in 2008 in recognition of his distinguished contributions to Hong Kong society, he is currently Honorary Professor of Law at  the University of Hong Kong.

Dame Anne Owers, DBE, BA Cambridge, is the Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons from 2001 to 2010. Between 2010 and 2011 she chaired an independent review of the prison system in Northern Ireland, and she has previously served as director of JUSTICE, the UK-based human rights and law reform organisation. In June 2008, she was appointed Chairman of Christian Aid.

Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa:

Professor Anthony Grafton, AB, PhD, Chicago, is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University. A historian of early modern Europe, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (for his book New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery), the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and in 2011 served as President of the American Historical Association.

Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE, is a playwright who has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage. He is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation and has won numerous awards for his plays including Arcadia, The Real Thing, The Invention of Love and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love, and has received an Academy Award and four Tony Awards. Born in Czechoslovakia, his plays explore themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom as well as exploring linguistics and philosophy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa:

Professor Ingrid Daubechies, BS, PhD Vrije Universiteit Brussel, is Professor of Mathematics at Duke University. Best known for her work with wavelets in image compression, she is the first woman president of the International Mathematical Union and in 2000 became the first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics. She has been awarded the Louis Empain Prize for Physics, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and American Mathematical Society Steele Prize for Exposition for her book Ten Lectures on Wavelets. She currently serves as Chair of the Fields Medal Committee and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Mathematical Society, among others.

Baroness (Tanni) Grey-Thompson, DBE, DL, BA Loughborough, won 16 medals, 11 of them gold, over the course of her Paralympic career and is considered to be one of the most successful disabled athletes in the UK. A wheelchair racer, she also won the London Marathon wheelchair event six times between 1992 and 2002. She has served as non-executive director for UK Athletics and on the board of the London Marathon and the board of Transport for London, and is a television presenter for the BBC and S4C. She also serves as Chair of the Women's Sports and Fitness Foundation Commission on the Future of Women's Sport.

Mr Colin Smith, CBE, BSc Southampton, is Director of Engineering and Technology at Rolls-Royce, where he previously held the roles of Director of Research and Technology and Director of Engineering and Technology for Civil Aerospace. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, The Royal Aeronautical Society, and The Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa:

Mr Murray Perahia, KBE, BMus Mannes College, is a pianist and conductor who has worked with Benjamin Britten Vladimir Horowitz and Pablo Casals. Active in chamber music in addition to his distinguished solo career, he has appeared regularly with the Guarneri and Budapest String Quartets, and is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The first American to win first prize at the Leeds Piano Competition, in 2012 he was voted into the inaugural Gramophone Hall of Fame. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Music and an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music.