Professor awarded with Honorary Degree from Scotland

24 May, 2011
 
Professor awarded with Honorary Degree from Scotland
Professor Marilyn Waring from the Institute of Public Policy

AUT University’s Professor Marilyn Waring has been awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from an international university.

The degree

Professor Marilyn Waring, in AUT’s Institute of Public Policy, was awarded the honorary degree from Glasgow Caledonian University for her “outstanding international contribution towards the understanding of feminism and female human rights”.

This was an important aspect of the award for Professor Waring.

“I am very honoured and especially pleased that the award is for research in feminism and female human rights and not hidden behind a generic political economy or political science discipline title,” she says.

She will officially be awarded the honorary degree at a ceremony at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in November in front of an estimated crowd of 2000 people.

Where she is now

Professor Waring left for Scotland late last week, to be a guest of the university at a conference on women in the Scottish economy.

The event will be filmed as a documentary for Scottish national television and will involve Professor Waring having meetings with members of the new Scottish Parliament.

She believes her invitation to the conference and a book that is currently being written about her led to receiving the honorary degree.

“The organiser of the conference, Ailsa McKay, is one of the two women who have called for proposals for the book called Counting on Marilyn Waring and I imagine this is the link which has led to the honorary doctorate.”

This is the first Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters for Professor Waring who, among numerous other awards and affiliations, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to women and economics in the 2008 New Years Honours List.