Elliott was an historian of eighteenth-century Ireland when she became one of seven commissioners in the Opsahl Commission, an independent enquiry into the views of ordinary people in Northern Ireland about peace and reconciliation. The Commission’s fundamental premise was that the resolution of the conflict had to involve everyone in Northern Ireland: they had to take “ownership” of the process. The commissioners invited submissions from any group or persons and held confidential focus groups and private sessions in eleven different venues throughout Northern Ireland, as well as in school assemblies. The Commission became an essential, early stage in the peace process that led to the Good Friday Agreement. The experience allowed Elliott to reflect on lack of public understandings about democracy and political accountability, the embeddedness of a “dependency culture”, and the importance of historical memory. These were insights that she reflected upon in her aptly named book, When God Took Sides: Religion and Identity in Ireland – Unfinished Business (2009).  

Baroness Sharp of Guildford is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for further education, higher education and skills in the House of Lords. A vocal campaigner on the needs of part-time students, she helped secure concessions from the Government that ensured part-time students were not forgotten in the higher education bill. She was elected a Fellow of Birkbeck in 2005. 

‘My admiration for Birkbeck and its students stems from the fact that studying for a degree part-time, after a full day’s work, is a tough way to do it,’ she says. 

‘I realised this when I was teaching at LSE in the 1960s, and 40 years on, it remains the tough way but also the sensible way of seeking to widen participation and open the doors to lifelong learning.’ 

‘It was because the Government’s white paper on higher education of 2003 lacked this vision and made not even one mention of the part-time route to degrees that I took up the cudgels on behalf of part-timers. To add insult to injury, the Government also proposed a system of up-front loans to pay the fees of full-timers, loans which were not available to part-timers. 

‘Together with colleagues in the House of Lords, where Birkbeck has many friends, we were able to soften the pill a little, but we continue to battle against this overt discrimination and try to instil into ministers the need for a far more flexible approach to higher education which embraces part-time education rather than leaves it on the side-lines, if they are to realise their ambitions on widening participation.’ 

Nominated by students Antoine Decressac and Cecilia Danielsson 

Maeve Heneke is the person I want to nominate. She was teaching the Approaches to Study and was the very first teacher I had in about 40 years and the first contact I had with university education. As a mature student I was extremely worried I would feel out of touch, academically deficient. From day one she focused on what I could do well and gently (but firmly) pointed at the areas I could improve upon. She would sit with every single student and review face to face the assignments, explaining the grade received, going through every point that would help improve our skills. Emails were always answered. Maeve is a tough grader but fair and entirely committed to the success of the students she teaches. I left the course confident that I could do well in academia and she is the reason I am still studying at Birkbeck. 

I came back to Higher Education because I was recovering from a serious brain injury. Maeve had taken a great deal of interest in my personal health situation, especially as I had acquired a condition that made speech and language production frustrating. She gave polite and encouraging feedback about my piece, saying that it was enjoyable. However, she had the difficult task of delivering a critical analysis to a student recovering from trauma, who also needed positively to re-examine the tenets of their capabilities. Without dressing up her thoughts, or sugaring the pill, she had the skills of being direct as quickly and effectively as possible. She was so trustworthy, the only action I could initiate was to absolutely take her at her word, and follow her advice. I am now completing my final year, and Linguistics forms a large part of my life. I plan to continue studying an Applied Linguistic Masters after graduation and plan to do a Ph.D. around my interests in Neurolinguistics. Without the initial support of Maeve Heneke, it is doubtful I would have continued past the first year.  

Professor Les Moran is a former head of Birkbeck’s School of Law and one of the key players in establishing the Law School’s international reputation. His cutting-edge scholarship, and campaigning on behalf of LGBTQ+ rights, shows scholarship and activism at its best. Les was also instrumental in putting criminology and justice policy research on the map at Birkbeck. 

Professor Moran has written and researched extensively on matters relating to sexuality and law, criminal justice, with particular reference to hate crime, law and visual culture and the judiciary. He has a keen interest in multidisciplinary and empirical legal research. 

Laura Mulvey’s research covers feminist film theory, melodrama and world cinema, and the aesthetics of stillness in the moving image. Her most important work was her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” published in 1975, detailing her application of psychoanalysis to support her argument that classical Hollywood cinema adopts a male-oriented spectatorship, a subject now opularized by the term “male gaze.”  

Mulvey is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck. She has written and co-directed numerous arthouse films, the most recent being 23 August 2008, a short film about two Iraqi brothers living and working in Baghdad under the Saddam Hussein regime which we co-directed with Faysal Abdullah and Mark Lewis. Mulvey’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at the Peltz Gallery based at Birkbeck’s School of Arts in Gordon Square. 

Nominated by student Showbi Ally 

I would like to nominate a Birkbeck Tutor, Dr Kerry Harman. In my first year of study, Kerry encouraged me to continue when I felt overwhelmed and thought about leaving. She recognised my potential and reminded me of a good piece of work I did which I had never thought possible to give a presentation in front of a classroom. Kerry steered me into the directions of support at the university and gaining study skills. In addition, Kerry taught in a fun, down to earth manner, always happy and smiling which made learning much easier to understand. She acknowledged different forms of creativity and how to address this academically. Pre-Covid, Kerry also taught an extra-curriculum class on a Friday evening, in-person including films on the subject and organised speakers from abroad to talk to the class. This showed her dedication and enthusiasm to additionally fulfil the university learning experience with her engaging knowledge. Also, Dr Harman is involved in Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group at Birkbeck which is an important topic. I appreciated Kerry’s interest in each student and I remember that care, attention and commitment which I’m sure has helped and influenced me to continue with my degree as I am now in my last year.  

Kemi Badenoch is the Member of Parliament for the Saffron Walden constituency in Essex, winning her seat at the General Election in the summer of 2017. 

She sits on both the Justice Select Committee and the 1922 Executive Committee. Before being elected to Parliament she was a Conservative member of the London Assembly, acting as the GLA Conservatives’ spokesperson for the economy, and was a member of both the Transport and Policing Committees. Prior to the Assembly, Kemi was a director at the Spectator magazine and worked in the financial services sector as associate director at Coutts & Co. Kemi spent some time living in the US and Nigeria as a child, returning to the UK at the age of 16. 

She studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex and went on to study law at Birkbeck, gaining her degree in 2009. 

Keith was a government adviser from 2006-2009 and the lead writer on the Curriculum Review Diversity and Citizenship, which made a series of recommendations aimed at promoting diversity across the school’s curriculum.  

His report concluded that all young people should be able to feel that the ethnic, religious and cultural aspects of their identity are recognised and understood and also gave way to the Who Do We Think We Are? project, which explored subjects including belonging, faith and Britishness. 

Keith received an OBE for services to education in 1996 and was knighted in 2007; and graduated with two degrees at Birkbeck in MA Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity and Contemporary Literature and Culture. 

He served as Head of Deptford Green School for 20 years and is now Chair of Blueprint for All (formerly the Stephen Lawrence Trust) and Trustee of APIE, a small education charity working in Rwanda. 

Sami Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, and also holds posts as Professorial Research Associate at the Food Studies Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Research Associate at the London Middle East Institute at SOAS. 

His research involves the religion, culture, politics and law of the Middle East, with particular attention to Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. His other research interest is food history and culture, ranging comparatively over Europe, the Middle East and India. 

Born in Iraq, Sami Zubaida went to school in Baghdad before studying at the Universities of Hull and Leicester.  

William Mattieu Williams was born in 1820 and apprenticed to a mathematical and optical instrument maker in Lambeth. After working from seven to eight, he ran over two kilometres to Southampton Buildings to attend classes at the London Mechanics’ Institute. He was also a painter, operatic singer and traveller.  

Williams contended that his classes were of “great value in training their members in independent and vigorous habits of thought, and fitting them to communicate to others any knowledge they possessed.” He exemplified this, eventually giving lectures himself at the Institution and becoming a long-term member of the management committee. He admitted to an “ever-increasing conviction of the solid truth of the great natural laws” of phrenology, a now-debunked early Victorian science on how the shape of the human skull influenced the personality of the individual.