Two eminent Lancaster academics - an international expert on stress and the workplace and the Head of the Medical School – have received awards in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Cary Cooper, Distinguished Professor of Organisational Psychology, has been knighted for his services to social science.
“This honour really means a lot to me – particularly as an American who has now made his home in Britain,” said Professor Cooper.
“ It’s a real thrill and pretty humbling for someone like me who has come from a working-class background – with immigrant parents from the Ukraine and Romania – and being the first in my family to go to university.
“I’ve lived in the UK for 50 years, having moved to the UK as a student in 1964. So now I feel as if I have finally been accepted!”
Professor Cooper has been chair of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences, an umbrella body of 46 learned societies in the social sciences representing 88,000 social scientists, since 2009. In 2001 he was awarded a CBE for his contribution to occupational safety and health. He was also lead scientist on the Government Office for Science Foresight project, Mental Capital and Wellbeing, in 2008. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, was the founding President of the British Academy of Management and is currently President of Relate.
He is the author or editor of over 160 books and written over 400 scholarly articles for academic journals . He is also a frequent contributor to national newspapers, TV and radio.
He is currently working with MPs, Lords and board-level business leaders as part of the All-Parliamentary Commission on the Future of Management. The Commission, which is co-chaired by Peter Ayliffe, President of the Chartered Management Institute, and Barry Sheerman, MP, will report its findings in July.
Professor Anne Garden, the Head of Lancaster Medical School in the Faculty of Health and Medicine, has been awarded the MBE for services to medical education.
She said she was delighted with the honour.
“It was totally out of blue and I couldn’t believe it when I got the news. This happens to other people, not to me!”
Professor Garden arrived at Lancaster University as Director of the Centre for Medical Education in April 2006, having previously been Head of the School of Medical Education at the University of Liverpool.
Having graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1973 and house jobs in Aberdeen and Stornoway, she settled on a career in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, becoming a Member of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) in 1979 and Fellow of the RCOG in 1992.
She worked in Cape Town, South Africa and Toronto, Canada, before taking up a post as Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Liverpool in 1987.