Oxford scholars recognised in Queen's Birthday Honours

Dr Frances Lannon, who last year retired after serving as Principal of Lady Margaret Hall for thirteen years, has been made a Dame of the British Empire for services to higher education. Appointed Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Lady Margaret Hall in 1977, she was Vice-Principal from 1992 to 1997. During her time as Principal she also served as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University, Vice-Chair and then Chair of the Conference of Colleges, and a Member of Council, as well as sitting on a number of committees of Council. She remains an honorary fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. An historian of 19th and 20th century Spain, she has published works on the relationship of religion and politics in modern Spain in the period before, during, and after the Spanish Civil War. She has also published on the history of women and gender in 20th century Spain.

Professor David Clary, President of Magdalen College and Professor of Chemistry, is knighted for services to international science. Sir David has been President of Magdalen for eleven years. Prior to that he was Head of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and a Professorial Fellow of St John’s College. He served as the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2009 to 2013. He leads a research group studying the theory and computer simulation on the reactions, energy transfer and dynamics of polyatomic molecules. This includes problems in the gas phase, clusters, solid surfaces and biomolecules. Their work links with many areas of chemistry, has close links with several experimental groups, and has many important applications, ranging from atmospheric and astrophysical science to biochemistry. The author of over 300 papers in theoretical chemistry, Sir David is Editor of Chemical Physics Letters and is on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science.

Professor Roger Scruton, Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall and Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the University, is knighted for services to philosophy teaching and public education. Formerly Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck and Boston, his publications include Art and Imagination, The Aesthetics of Architecture, A Short History of Modern Philosophy, Kant: A Very Short Introduction, Modern Philosophy, Animal Rights and Wrongs, and Beauty.  Many of his works have been translated into several languages. He is also a well-known writer and commentator. 

Dr Larry Siedentop, Emeritus Fellow of Keble College, is knighted for services to political science. A political historian, Sir Larry was Fellow of Keble College and Lecturer in Political Thought at the University from 1973 to 2003. His publications include Tocqueville (Oxford University Press, 1994) and Democracy in Europe (Penguin, 2000), a classic essay on European integration which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It has been credited with influencing the convening of the European Constitutional Convention. His latest book, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Liberalism in the Middle Ages, was published by Allen Lane/Penguin in 2014.

Professor Maggie Snowling, President of St John’s College and Professor of Psychology, is appointed CBE for services to science and the understanding of dyslexia. Professor Snowling's research focuses on dyslexia and language disorders, and spans psychology, medicine and education. She has made important contributions to our understanding of how children learn, and sometimes fail to learn, to read. She has demonstrated that dyslexia tends to run in families and has a distinct cognitive profile. She was the first to propose that the critical problem was the processing of speech sounds, a theory that is now generally accepted. Her work has, as a result, not only significantly raised awareness of children with dyslexic reading difficulties, but has also improved the quality of teaching for these children. She has been influential in ensuring that academic work is translated into policy. She was, for example, a key advisor to the Independent Review: Identifying and Teaching Children with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties (Rose 2009), the recommendations of which were then supported through a £10m grant for the training of specialist teachers.

Professor Georgina Born, Professor of Music and Anthropology and Professorial Fellow of Mansfield College, is appointed OBE for services to musicology, anthropology and higher education. She has published widely on the anthropology and sociology of music and culture; music in the late 20th and 21st centuries; music, digital media and mediation; social and cultural theory; ethnography; cultural production and cultural institutions; public service broadcasting, television, and cultural and media policy. Her work combines ethnographic and theoretical writings on music, media and cultural production. Her ethnographies have often focused on major institutions – television production at the BBC, computer music at IRCAM, interdisciplinary art-science and new media art at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently leading the European Research Council-funded research programme, Music, Digitisation, Mediation: Towards Interdisciplinary Music Studies (MusDig), which is mapping and analysing the far-reaching changes to music and musical practices afforded by digitisation and digital media in the developing and the developed world.

Professor Edward Melhuish, research professor at both the University of Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London, is appointed OBE for services to social science. At Oxford he is based in the Department of Education, where he studies social and communicative development from birth to adulthood, including the effect of environmental factors, in a number of longitudinal studies. He is also interested in early education and care, parenting, child poverty and disadvantage, and child development and social policy. He uses theoretically driven research to address applied issues and policy questions to produce improvements in development and well-being in areas such as the development of pre-term babies, the children of psychiatrically disturbed parents, social, linguistic and cognitive development, emergent literacy, and early childhood education and care and the evaluation of policy initiatives.

David Palfreyman, the Bursar of New College, has been appointed OBE for services to higher education. Mr Palfreyman has been Bursar of the college since 1988. He is a non-executive director of OXIP (the Oxford Investment Partnership), of which New College is a part-owner, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (OxCHEPS), which is based at New College. He is the Honorary Treasurer of, and a Trustee of, the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE). He has published widely on a range of topics including the law of higher education, comparative international higher education policy, and the management of universities.