Poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill among recipients of Honorary Degrees at Trinity College Dublin

Posted on: 06 July 2007

Poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is among six candidates to receive honorary degrees at Trinity College Dublin today (6 July). The award winning poet and Aosdána member was conferred with a Doctor in Letters (Litt.D) for her significant contribution to modern Irish poetry.

Holder of the Ireland Chair of Poetry from 2001 to 2004*, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is generally regarded as one of the country’s greatest living Irish language poets. Her major collections, which have been published over the last twenty-five years, are regarded as landmarks in modern Irish poetry. Her work draws upon themes of ancient Irish folklore and mythology, combined with themes of femininity, sexuality, and culture. Her poetry has been translated in several languages besides English, including French, German, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Estonian, and Japanese.

The other recipients of honorary degrees are:

Louise Asmal LL.D.
A founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement with her husband Kader Asmal in 1963, she acted as secretary and administrator of the organisation for twenty-seven years and was editor of its monthly newsletter Amandla. She was particularly active in promoting assistance to South African political prisoners and their families. She co-authored Reconciliation Through Truth: A Reckoning of Apartheid’s Criminal Governance (1996) with Nelson Mandela, Kader Asmal and Ronald Suresh Roberts. Louise Asmal is currently regional director of the Canon Collins Educational Trust for Southern Africa, a major higher education charitable foundation.

Carol Bellamy LL.D.
Carol Bellamy is President and CEO of World Learning, one of the first not-for-profit international educational organizations. She was also Executive Director of UNICEF for a ten- year period from 1995-2005. Prior to leading UNICEF, Carol Bellamy was the director of the Peace Corps from 1993 to 1995. She was the first person to have been both a volunteer for the organisation and its director. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala from 1963 to 1965. A graduate of Gettysburg College, she was a highly successful in business and politics and is a former President of the New York City Council.

Gyan Johari Sc.D.
One of the world’s leading scientists in glass, ceramics and allied materials, he is based at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada but has had associations with TCD for some thirty-six years, leading to a history of research collaboration. As a young scientist in New York, he was involved in the discovery of a dynamical process in viscous liquids and in the glassy state of polar liquids known in the literature as the Johari-Goldstein relaxation mechanism. The implication of his discoveries, then and later, on glass transition remains one of the major subjects of debate in glass science.

Mark Pigott Sc.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PACCAR, the American-based firm which is the second largest heavy-duty truck manufacturer in the world. Under his chairmanship it has been recognised as a market leader in technology innovation. One in four trucks on Irish roads is a PACCAR truck, under the DAF and Leyland nameplates. Awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2003 in recognition of outstanding services that were directed toward strengthening business relationships between the UK and USA, Mark Pigott was named CEO of the Year by Washington CEO magazine in 2004. A graduate of Stanford, Mark Pigott is an active philanthropist in the US and in Britain, being a major sponsor of the Folger library and the Royal Shakespeare Company and he has latterly been an enthusiastic and generous supporter of the Science Gallery at TCD and is also a champion of greater funding for the humanities in the College.

Sir Michael Rutter D.Ed.
Latterly Research Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of London ‘s Institute of Psychiatry, he is regarded as having been the single most influential international figure both in child and adolescent psychiatry and in developmental psychopathology over the past 35-years. His research has included the developmental links between childhood and adult life, schools as social institutions, psychiatric genetics and psychiatric epidemiology.

ENDS

Notes to editor
*The Ireland Chair of Poetry was established by the Arts Councils North and South, in partnership with TCD, UCD and QUB and is attached to each university.