Kate Raworth
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Wednesday, 4 September 2024 at 11.30 am
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR TASMAN CROWE,
Vice-President for Sustainability on 4 September 2024, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Economic Science, honoris causa on KATE RAWORTH.
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President, Graduates, Colleagues, Honoured Guests,
Many congratulations to all the graduating students here today. In selecting our honorary doctorate recipient, we particularly had in mind the first graduating students of UCD’s innovative new BSc in Sustainability, which combines perspectives on the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability with experience of working in interdisciplinary teams to address the most pressing challenges of our time. It has been a huge pleasure to work with the staff and students on the programme and it’s really wonderful to be here to see you, our first cohort, completing this stage of your journey and continuing on to make a difference in the world.
We did not have to think for long about who could best inspire our graduates on their onward journey. If there is one person who embodies the kind of disruptive thinking and action needed to move us forward into a new way of living that creates a better relationship between us and our planet, it’s Kate Raworth.
Kate is an ecological economist and creator of the Doughnut - a concept that aims to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet - and co-founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Her internationally best-selling book Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist has been translated into over twenty languages. The Doughnut's holistic scope and visual simplicity, coupled with its evidence-based grounding, has turned it into a convening space for big conversations about reimagining and remaking the future on a more sustainable template. It is now being discussed, debated and put into practice in education and in communities, in business and in government, in towns, cities and nations worldwide.
Kate is a Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, where she teaches on the Masters in Environmental Change and Management. She is also Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Over the past 25 years, Kate’s career has taken her from working with micro-entrepreneurs in the villages of Zanzibar to co-authoring the Human Development Report for UNDP in New York, followed by a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam. She holds a first-class BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and an MSc in Economics for Development, both from Oxford University. She is a member of the Club of Rome and currently serves on the World Health Organisation Council on the Economics of Health for All.
Kate’s work has been widely influential with diverse audiences, from the UN General Assembly and Pope Francis to Extinction Rebellion. Kate has written extensively for media including The Guardian, The New Statesman, Newsweek.com, and Wired.com, and has contributed to many radio programmes including for BBC Radio 4, The World Service, ABC and NPR, as well as television including CNN World News, Al-Jazeera, BBC, ITV and CBC.
My own experience of the compelling and inspiring nature of Kate’s narrative came as part of Ireland’s recent Citizens’ Assembly for Biodiversity Loss, at which she made a wonderful and far-ranging presentation which fueled discussion and new ways of thinking at all levels among those present.
Kate rarely travels and never by air, so we were delighted when she accepted our invitation to come to UCD to receive an honorary degree and so join the UCD community. I look forward now to hearing her remarks to you as graduating students and indeed to her seminar and panel discussion later this afternoon, which is part of a programme of events Kate has undertaken to maximise the reach and benefit of her visit here to Ireland.
I would like to ask her now to step up to receive her honorary degree from our President, Professor Orla Feely.
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Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hanc meam filium, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Scientiae Oeconomica; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.