President Michael D Higgins to receive honorary doctorate from University of Manchester today

President Michael D Higgins will receive an honorary doctorate while in Manchester. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Maeve McTaggart

President Michael D Higgins is set to receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater the University of Manchester.

It is one of the first engagements Mr Higgins will attend abroad since he was discharged from hospital following a brief stay last month.

His visit Manchester this week coincides with the tenth anniversary of his State Visit to the United Kingdom in April 2014.

Mr Higgins will be conferred with the Degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa by the Chancellor of the University of Manchester, Nazir Afzal OBE, this evening.

It is in recognition of his contributions to literature and public life, with Mr Higgins having a strong connection with the university where he studied from 1968 to 1971.

Mr Higgins has been conferred with several such awards from institutions across the world, including at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Athens and Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.

The conferral ceremony, with a dinner in the President’s honour, will take place at the Whitworth Art Gallery, which forms part of the University and will be attended by Mr Higgins and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell.

Tomorrow, he will deliver the inaugural lecture in a new annual series of lectures which will run at the University of Manchester for five years, titled the John Kennedy Lecture Series.

The title of the inaugural lecture, presented by President Higgins is: ‘Of the consciousness our times need in responding to interacting crises and the role of Universities as spaces of discourse in facilitating it’.

Mr Higgins will meet with a number of contacts in universities and other institutions in Manchester over the course of his visit, including some of those he previously collaborated with on academic projects and members of the Irish community who have been invited to attend the public lecture.

It will be the first in a number of major lectures which Mr Higgins will deliver over the coming months.

He will deliver an address at Áras an Uachtaráin when he receives the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Agricola Medal at a ceremony on June 7.

It will focus on models of food security, building on previous speeches he has delivered on the same subject at the second Dakar Summit on food sovereignty and resilience in Senegal last January and at the World Food Forum in Rome last October.