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11.11.2025

Honouring Excellence | National University of Ireland 2025 Honorary Degrees

On Thursday November 6, the National University of Ireland proudly conferred honorary degrees on six outstanding individuals who have made exceptional contributions across science, literature, education, the arts, public life, and history.

The conferring took place in the Aviva Stadium on Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4, at 4pm. Members of the NUI Senate as well as friends and family of the six graduates attended.

At the ceremony, NUI Chancellor, Professor Michael Murphy, awarded degrees to:

1. Emer Cooke, Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, will receive a Degree of Doctor of Science (DSc). Citation given by Ms Linda O’Shea Farren.
   

   

   
   Emer Cooke has been the Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, based in Amsterdam, since November 2020. She served as Chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) for five years, from the beginning of her EMA mandate until the end of October 2025.
   
   Between November 2016 and November 2020, she was the Director responsible for all medical product related regulatory activities at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
   
   Ms. Cooke is a pharmacist with Master’s degrees in Science and Business Administration from Trinity College Dublin. She has over 30 years’ experience in international regulatory affairs and held management positions at the EMA as Head of Inspections and Head of International Affairs respectively from 2002 until 2016.
   
   She has also worked in the Pharmaceuticals unit of the European Commission, where intra-alia, she was responsible for international collaboration, EU enlargement and the orphan medicines regulation for the European Pharmaceutical Industry Association (EFPIA) and in various industry and regulatory positions in Ireland.
   
   In 2021 she received the Muckross (her alma mater) Woman of the Year award. In 2022 she was a recipient of the Trinity College Alumni Award and named “European of the Year” by European Movement Ireland. In 2023 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) University of Medicines and Health Sciences. Most recently, in 2025, Ms Cooke was inducted as a Fellow of DIA and was awarded DIA's highest honour - the '2025 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Health'. 2025 also saw Ms Cooke presented with the ICMRA award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to international cooperation and the advancement of ICMRA’s mission.

2. Claire Keegan, critically acclaimed fiction novelist, will receive a Degree of Doctor of Literature (DLitt). Citation given by Professor Anne Fogarty.
   

   

   Claire Keegan's works of fiction are critically acclaimed and have been translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize.

   Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award. Small Things Like These, a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kerry Prize for Irish Novel of the Year.

   So Late in the Day was published in the New Yorker and shortlisted for the British Book Awards. Keegan was awarded Woman of the Year for Literature in Ireland in 2022, Author of the Year 2023, the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts and Letters 2024 and was recently presented with the Siegfried Lenz Award in Hamburg.

3. Maurice Manning, academic, former Chancellor of NUI and Teachta Dála, will receive a Degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD). Citation given by Professor Davd Farrell.
   

   

    

   Dr Manning was born in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, educated at de la Salle Schools Bagenalstown, Rockwell College, University College Dublin and the University of Strathclyde.

   He has been a member of the NUI Senate for twenty seven years, having been elected on the graduate panel in every election since 1982; he served on the Governing Authority of UCD from 1979 to 2008; he spent much of his academic career in the Department of Politics at UCD where he established a reputation for his teaching, his closeness to students and his publications.

   He has published widely and is currently Adjunct Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD. He is also currently Chair of the Publishing Committee of the Institute of Public Administration. Dr Manning has served in both Dáil and Seanad Éireann. During that time he was a member of the New Ireland Forum, and the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body. He was both leader of Seanad Éireann and Leader of the Opposition in that House. Maurice Manning has also been President of the Irish Human Rights Commission and was Chair of the European Group of National Human Rights Institutions.

   Dr Maurice Manning was elected Chancellor of the National University of Ireland on March 12, 2009. Dr Manning was the fifth Chancellor of the University since its establishment in 1908.
   

4. Aibhlín McCrann, Director of Communiqué International and harper, will receive a Degree of Doctor of Music (DMus). Citation given by Professor Harry White.
   

   

    

   Aibhlín McCrann is a Director of Communiqué International, one of Ireland’s leading communications consultancies, where she specialises in stakeholder engagement, facilitation and strategic writing in the state, semi-state, private, community and voluntary sectors. She has a unique understanding of the arts and cultural sector in Ireland and of the complex dynamic and challenging environment in which it operates.

   A fluent Irish speaker and practicing harper/musician, she has considerable media experience as a performer, spokesperson, and freelance writer. She holds a BA (Hons) B.MUS from University College Dublin. As Director of An Chúirt Chruitireachta, the International Festival for Irish Harp, for more than 27 years, Aibhlín transformed the perception of Irish harping nationally and internationally. In her capacity as Chair of Cruit Éireann, Harp Ireland, she works with her board to develop and promote harping in Ireland and worldwide. In 2019, partnering with the then Department of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Heritage and Media, she achieved UNESCO recognition for Irish Harping on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List of Humanities.

   Aibhlín served on the board of the Arts Council for ten years and was its deputy Chair, 2012-2016. She is Chair of the internationally renowned Irish Chamber Orchestra and serves on the board of Glór Arts Centre Ennis, Co Clare. She served on the Board of the Irish Traditional Music Archive and is currently a member of the Department of Culture Communications and Sports committee to assess initiatives for inclusion on the UNESCO list and National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. She was reappointed to the Governing Authority of the University of Limerick in 2023.

   Additionally, she is a member of the board of UCH Concert Hall, and for many years was Deputy Chair of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

5. Patricia O’Donovan, former Executive Director of the International Labour Organization (ILO), will receive a Degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD). Citation given by Dr. Ruth Barrington.
   
   

   

   Patricia O’Donovan has had a long and distinguished career in public service at national and international levels as an advocate for women’s rights, equality and fairness in the workplace. As a national trade union representative, she played a key role in the 1980s and 1990s in the development and implementation of legislative and policy reforms around women’s rights at work, part-time workers, statutory minimum wage, and the rights of people with disabilities.

   As the first person to hold the position of Equality Officer in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, she pioneered a positive action programme which led to the increased representation of women in leadership roles in trade unions. In the 1990s, Ms O’Donovan was involved in national level negotiations which led to the social partnership agreements which delivered economic growth, industrial stability, and social progress in Ireland.

   Appointed by President Mary Robinson, she served as a member of the Council of State from 1991 to 1997.
   At international level, Ms O’Donovan was an elected member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Specialized Agency of the United Nations with the mandate for setting international labour standards for the world of work. Ms O’Donovan held several senior leadership positions in the ILO. As Director of the Social Dialogue Programme, she provided policy advice and guidance to ILO member States on labour law and industrial relations. As Executive Director, she was responsible for management and administration at ILO headquarters in Geneva. She was the first woman to be appointed Director of the International Training Centre in Turin, the global residential training facility of the ILO.

   Ms O’Donovan also served as an Independent Public Interest member, and Vice-Chair, of the Press Council of Ireland.

8. Robert Savage, Irish, British and Atlantic World history Professor at Boston College, will receive a Degree of Doctor of Literature (DLitt). Citation given by Professor Peter Gray.
   
   

   

   Robert Savage teaches Irish, British and Atlantic World history at Boston College. He served as one of the directors of the university’s renowned Irish Studies program for over 17 years bringing academics, writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers to the Chestnut Hill campus.
   
   He has been a visiting professor at the University of Galway, Venice International University, Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University, Belfast and at the University of Edinburgh.
   
    His many publications explore contemporary Irish history with a particular focus on the evolution of the broadcast media. Savage’s 2010 book A Loss of Innocence? Television and Irish Society 1960-1972 won the Donnelly Prize for Best Book in History from the American Conference for Irish Studies.
   
   The BBC’s Irish Troubles: Television, Conflict and Northern Ireland was short listed for the 2015 Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize. His most recent volume, Northern Ireland, the BBC and Censorship in Thatcher’s Britain, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. Savage’s new project addresses how the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ arrived in England in the early 1970s.

Professor Michael Murphy said on the occasion,

"Today, we honour six people and confer honorary doctorates on to those who have gone the extra mile, who have been brilliantly creative, who have made sacrifices for the good of others, who made us laugh, people who have become role models for the next generation. We welcome our six awardees into honorary life membership of the National University of Ireland and look forward to their engagement with us in the years ahead".

Since 1909, the National University of Ireland has given out more than 1,250 honorary degrees to such figures as Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy, Seamus Heaney and Hillary Clinton. Full list of recipients.

 

 

 

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