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Philippe Sands

Philippe Sands
KC
Born (1960-10-17) 17 October 1960 (age 64)
London, England[1]
NationalityBritish and French
EducationUniversity College School
Alma materCorpus Christi College, Cambridge
Occupation(s)Barrister, author
Notable workLawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (2005)

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (2008)
East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016)

The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022)

Philippe Joseph Sands, KC FRSL Hon FBA (born 17 October 1960) is a British and French writer and lawyer at 11 King's Bench Walk[2] and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London.[3] A specialist in international law, he appears as counsel and advocate before many international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.

Sands has served on the panel of arbitrators at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).[4]

He is the author of seventeen books on international law, including Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008). His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016) has been awarded numerous prizes, including the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, and has been translated into 24 languages. His latest books are The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020) about Otto Wächter and The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022) about Chagos and the life of Liseby Elysé.[5]

Sands served as President of English PEN[6] from February 2018 to April 2023.

Early life

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Sands was born in London on 17 October 1960 to Jewish parents; his mother (née Buchholz)[1] was French.[7] He was educated at University College School[7] in Hampstead, London, and read law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, attaining a BA degree in 1982 and going on to achieve first-class honours in the LLM course a year later. After completing his postgraduate studies at Cambridge, Sands spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School.

Academic career

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From 1984 to 1988, Sands was a Research Fellow at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and the Cambridge University Research Centre for International Law (now the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law). He has also held academic positions at King's College London (1988–1993) and SOAS (1993–2001). He was a Global Professor of Law at New York University Law School (1993–2003) and has held visiting positions at Paris I (Sorbonne), University of Melbourne, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, University of Toronto, Boston College Law School and Lviv University.

In 2019, he was appointed the Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Sands was the co-founder of the Centre for International Environmental Law (1989)[8] and the Project on International Courts and Tribunals (1997).[9]

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Sands was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1985. In 2000, he was a founding member of Matrix Chambers and was appointed Queen's Counsel (QC) in 2003.[10] Sands was elected a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2009.[11] He joined 11 King's Bench Walk on 1 October 2022.

Sands has acted as counsel and advocate in cases that span a wide range of subject areas, including:

Sands has acted as counsel in more than two dozen cases at the International Court of Justice, including the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinion (counsel for the Solomon Islands);[12] the Georgia v. Russia dispute (counsel for Georgia);[13] Whaling in the Antarctic (counsel for Australia);[14] Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965;[15] and Application of the Genocide Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide[16] (counsel for The Gambia). He has also been instructed in inter-State arbitrations, including the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (counsel for Mauritius) and the dispute between the Philippines and China over maritime jurisdiction in the South China Sea (counsel for the Philippines).[17]

Prior to accepting appointments as ICSID arbitrator (since 2007), Sands acted as counsel in ICSID and other investment cases (including Tradex, Waste Management and Vivendi).[18] Sands now sits as arbitrator in investment disputes and in sports disputes (CAS).

In 2005, Sands' book Lawless World catalysed legal and public debate in the UK on the legality of the 2003 Iraq War. The book addresses a range of topics including the Pinochet trial in London, the creation of the International Criminal Court, the War on Terror and the establishment of the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay. In the second edition of Lawless World (2006) Sands revealed that the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had told President George W. Bush that he would support US plans to invade Iraq before he had sought legal advice about the invasion's legality. Sands exposed a memorandum dated 31 January 2003 that described a two-hour meeting between Blair and Bush, during which Bush discussed the possibility of luring Saddam Hussein's forces to shoot down a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an act that would cause Iraq to be in breach of UN Security Council Resolutions.[19]

The memo disclosed that Blair told Bush that he would support US plans to go to war in the absence of a second UN Security Council Resolution, apparently contradicting an assurance given by Blair in the UK Parliament shortly afterwards on 25 February 2003.[20] Sands has maintained the view that there was no basis in international law for military action in Iraq.[21]

Sands' 2008 book Torture Team sets out in detail the role of senior lawyers in the Bush administration in authorising torture (including so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' at Guantánamo Bay). As a result of his work on Torture Team, Sands was invited to give oral and written evidence to the UK and Dutch Parliaments, as well as to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate:

In 2009, Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker on Sands' reaction to news that Spanish jurist Baltazar Garzon had received motions requesting that six former Bush officials might be charged with war crimes.[27]

From 2010 to 2012, Sands served as a Commissioner on the UK Government Commission on a Bill of Human Rights. The commission's Report was published in December 2012.[28] Sands and Baroness Kennedy disagreed with the majority, and their dissent ("In Defence of Rights") was published in the London Review of Books.[29]

Sands and Kennedy expressed concern that support for a UK Bill of Rights was motivated by a desire for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights. Writing in The Guardian in May 2015, Sands argued that plans for a British Bill of Rights could leave some people in the UK with more rights than others and that this would be "inconsistent with the very notion of fundamental human rights, in which every human being has basic minimum rights."[30]

On 17 September 2015, Sands gave a public lecture at the UK Supreme Court entitled "Climate Change and the Rule of Law: Adjudicating the Future in International Law".[31] He expressed the view that a ruling by an international judicial body, such as the International Court of Justice, could help resolve the scientific dispute on climate change and be authoritative and legally dispositive.[32]

In December 2015, Sands (and two colleagues at Matrix Chambers) drafted a Legal Opinion on the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for Amnesty International, Oxfam and Saferworld. The Opinion concluded that by authorising the transfer of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the UK government was acting in breach of its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty, the EU Common Position on Arms Exports and the UK's Consolidated Criteria on Arms Exports.[33]

On 16 April 2018, Sands co-authored a piece in The Times in which it is argued that the UK had no established legal basis for the 2018 missile strikes against Syria.[34]

In November 2020, a panel of international lawyers chaired by Sands and Florence Mumba started drafting a proposed law criminalising ecocide, the destruction of ecosystems.[35] The law could be in force within five years, he told the Financial Times in July 2021.[36]

In February 2024, Sands argued in favour of the State of Palestine at the International Court of Justice's case on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. He said that "Palestinian statehood is not dependent on the approval of Israel" and that international law of self-determination required other "UN Member States [to] bring Israel’s occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money, no arms, no trade, no nothing."[37] He also claimed that the State of Israel "has arrogated to itself the right to decide who owns Palestinian land, who may live on it, and how it must be used" and its support for 700,000 settlers living illegally in the occupied Palestinian territory as "demographic manipulation of the highest order".[38] Sands refuted the US and the UK claims that an advisory opinion from the ICJ would negatively impact future negotiations.[38]

Writing, theatre and film

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Sands is a contributor to the Financial Times and The Guardian,[39] and an occasional contributor to the London Review of Books[40] and Vanity Fair.[41]

Sands frequently comments on issues of international law and is a contributor to BBC programmes, Sky News, CNN, Al Jazeera and national radio and TV stations around the world.[42]

His written work has formed the basis for four staged productions exploring the public and historical impact of international law:

Sands' book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016) has been translated into twenty languages. It formed the basis for the documentary What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy.[54] The film is directed by David Evans and premiered in April 2015 at the Tribeca Film Festival.[55] It was released in the US on 6 November 2015 and in the UK on 20 November 2015.[56][57]

Sands wrote the script and appears in the film alongside two sons of prominent Nazi officials, Niklas Frank (son of Hans Frank, the Governor-General of occupied Poland) and Horst von Wächter (son of Otto Wächter, the Governor of Kraków in Poland and Galicia in Ukraine). The documentary, which explores the relationship between the sons and their fathers, won the Yad Vashem Chairman's Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival[58] and was nominated in the Best Documentary category at the Stockholm Film Festival[59] and at the Evening Standard British Film Awards.[60]

In 2018, Sands wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary Intrigue: The Ratline, about the disappearance of senior Nazi Otto Wächter, investigating the "ratlines" by which he escaped justice.[61] Sands has since published a book on this topic.[62]

In 2019, Sands published an Introduction to Franz Kafka's The Trial.

In 2020, Sands published The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive.[63]

In 2022, he published The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy[5] about Chagos, where "a secret decision was taken to offer the US a base at Diego Garcia ... create a new colony (the 'British Indian Ocean Territory') and deport the entire local population."[64] As summarised by The Observer: "The Chagossians were forced from their archipelago in the Indian Ocean in the 1970s, and Britain still refuses to hand it back. Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands relates the wider tragedy of the scandal with nerve and precision."[65]

In May 2024, Sands joined the pianist Emanuel Ax, who was born in Lviv, for a performance at the Philharmonie de Paris entitled 'Justice, words, music: five moments'. This formed part of a series of events for which the Philharmonie invites figures from the artistic world and the world of ideas to take a look at music and to question the meaning of listening in order to approach ethical, political and social questions in a new light.

Sands served for a number of years on the Board of the Tricycle Theatre, and as President of English PEN[6] from February 2018 to April 2023 (having served on the Board since January 2013). He is a member of the Board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature,[66] and his interviewees at Hay have included Julian Assange (2011);[67] Vanessa Redgrave (2011);[68] Keir Starmer (2013);[69] John le Carré (2013);[70] Lord Justice Leveson (2014)[71] and Tippi Hedren (2016).[72]

Personal life

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Sands lives in North London with his wife and three children.[7] In a 2016 interview for The Guardian, he asserted: "I want to be treated as Philippe Sands individual, not Philippe Sands Brit, Londoner or Jew."[73]

Bibliography

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General

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Academic

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Prizes and awards

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References

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  1. ^ a b England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007
  2. ^ "Prof. Philippe Sands". 11KBW. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
  3. ^ "UCL Laws Centre for International Courts & Tribunals". University College London. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  4. ^ List of Arbitrators, Court of Arbitration for Sport; accessed 18 April 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d Sands, Philippe (2022). The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy. Orion Publishing. ISBN 9781474618137.
  6. ^ a b Sharp, Robert (5 January 2018). "Philippe Sands QC appointed President of English PEN". English PEN.
  7. ^ a b c Crace, John (13 February 2006). "Philippe Sands: Weapon of mass instruction". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
  8. ^ "Center for International Environmental Law CIEL". Center for International Environmental Law. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  9. ^ "Project on International Courts and Tribunals". pict-pcti.org. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  10. ^ "Prof. Philippe Sands KC - 11KBW". 11 King's Bench Walk. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
  11. ^ "Middle Temple". middletemple.org.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  12. ^ "Advisory Proceedings International Court of Justice". icj-cij.org. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  13. ^ "Contentious Cases International Court of Justice". icj-cij.org. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  14. ^ "Contentious Cases International Court of Justice". icj-cij.org. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  15. ^ "Latest developments | Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 | International Court of Justice". www.icj-cij.org.
  16. ^ "Latest developments | Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar) | International Court of Justice". www.icj-cij.org.
  17. ^ "Case view". pcacases.com. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  18. ^ Profile: Arbitrator Professor Philippe Sands QC, icsid.worldbank.org; accessed 18 April 2016.]
  19. ^ Norton-Taylor, Richard (3 February 2006). "Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  20. ^ "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 February 2003 (pt 5)". publications.parliament.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  21. ^ Philippe Sands' Letter to the Chilcot Inquiry (10 September 2010) Archived 12 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine; accessed 18 April 2016.
  22. ^ "House of Commons - Foreign Affairs - Minutes of Evidence". publications.parliament.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  23. ^ "House of Commons - Foreign Affairs - Fourth Report". www.publications.parliament.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  24. ^ Philippe Sands Evidence to the US House of Representatives Archived 17 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine, 6 May 2008; accessed 18 April 2016.
  25. ^ Philippe Sands Evidence to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 19 June 2008; accessed 18 April 2016.
  26. ^ "Rapport Commissie-Davids". rijksoverheid.nl (in Dutch). 12 January 2010. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  27. ^ Mayer, Jane (13 April 2009). "The Bush Six". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  28. ^ A UK Bill of Rights? The Choice Before Us, nationalarchives.gov.uk; accessed 18 April 2016.
  29. ^ Sands, Philippe; Kennedy, Helena (3 January 2013). "In Defence of Rights". London Review of Books. pp. 19–22. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  30. ^ Sands, Philippe (14 May 2015). "This British bill of rights could end the UK". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  31. ^ Climate Change and the Rule of Law: Adjudicating the Future in international Law, supremecourt.uk, 17 September 2015.
  32. ^ Vaughan, Adam (18 September 2015). "World court should rule on climate science to quash sceptics, says Philippe Sands". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  33. ^ "UK Government breaking the law supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, say leading lawyers". amnesty.org. 17 December 2015. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  34. ^ Sands, Philippe; Trapp, Kimberley (16 April 2018). "UK had 'no established legal basis' for Syria air strikes". The Times. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  35. ^ Bowcott, Owen (30 November 2020). "International lawyers draft plan to criminalise ecosystem destruction". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  36. ^ Clark, Pilita (29 July 2021). "Ecocide: a new weapon in the fight to save the planet". The Financial Times. Retrieved 29 July 2021.
  37. ^ "Palestine's plea against occupation". justiceinfo.net. 20 February 2024. Archived from the original on 17 July 2024. Retrieved 27 February 2024.
  38. ^ a b "ICJ hears Palestinian demands for end of Israeli occupation". The National. 19 February 2024. Archived from the original on 17 July 2024. Retrieved 17 July 2024.
  39. ^ "Philippe Sands". theguardian.com. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  40. ^ "Philippe Sands–LRB". www.lrb.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  41. ^ "Philippe Sands profile". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  42. ^ "18 November 2015, Today - BBC Radio 4". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  43. ^ Billington, Michael (24 April 2007). "Called To Account". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  44. ^ "Torture Team: The People Who Brought Cruelty And Criminality To Guantanamo divised [sic] by Nicolas Kent, Vanessa Redgrave & Philippe Sands, will be at the Tricycle Theatre for one night only - Sunday, 18 May 2008". londontheatre.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  45. ^ "Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Fiennes, Jay Sanders, Philippe Sands, Gillian Anderson - Hay Festival". hayfestival.com. 4 June 2011. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  46. ^ Hetrick, Adam (7 January 2011). "Long Wharf's 'Torture Team' Features Vanessa Redgrave, Jeff McCarthy, Jay O. Sanders". Playbill.com. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  47. ^ "A Song of Good and Evil Southbank Centre". www.southbankcentre.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  48. ^ Radio, Sveriges. "Philippe Sands "A Song of Good and Evil" - P2 Live". sverigesradio.se. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  49. ^ Prinzipien, Internationale Akademie Nürnberger. "A Song of Good and Evil". International Nuremberg Principles Academy. Archived from the original on 15 March 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  50. ^ "La chanson du bien et du mal". Confluences.org. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  51. ^ "A Song of Good and Evil". Kings Place. Archived from the original on 2 April 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  52. ^ "La dernière colonie". Festival d'Avignon. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
  53. ^ "Watch online: Philippe Sands: Towards a Less Brutal World". www.edbookfest.co.uk. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
  54. ^ Sands, Philippe. "The Diary: Philippe Sands". Financial Times. ISSN 0307-1766. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  55. ^ "Tribeca Film Festival 2015: My Nazi Legacy - What Our Fathers Did". Archived from the original on 26 March 2015. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  56. ^ "My Nazi Legacy (2015) Wildgaze". wildgazefilms.co.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  57. ^ "What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy reviews". metacritic.com. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
  58. ^ "Cemetery of Splendour". jff.org.il. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  59. ^ "Documentary Competition". Stockholm Film Festival. Archived from the original on 8 April 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  60. ^ Dex, Robert (14 January 2016). "Evening Standard British Film Awards - the contenders". Evening Standard. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  61. ^ "Intrigue: The Ratline". BBC. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  62. ^ Sands, Phillippe (2020). The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive. London: Weideman and Nicolson.
  63. ^ Sands, Philippe (22 October 2019). The Ratline. Orion. ISBN 9781474608152 – via www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk.
  64. ^ "The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy Hardcover – 25 Aug. 2022". Theinsightnews. 6 June 2022.
  65. ^ Adams, Tim (14 August 2022). "Review | The Last Colony by Philippe Sands review – Britain's Chagos Islands shame". The Observer.
  66. ^ "Hay Festival Council". hayfestival.com. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  67. ^ "Julian Assange - Hay Festival". www.hayfestival.com. 4 June 2011. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  68. ^ "Vanessa Redgrave talks to Philippe Sands - Hay Festival". hayfestival.com. 4 June 2011. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  69. ^ "Keir Starmer talks to Philippe Sands - Hay Festival". hayfestival.com. 3 June 2012. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  70. ^ Rob (June 2013). "John le Carré Talks to Philippe Sands". MAKING HAY at the Hay Festival. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  71. ^ "Brian Leveson talks to Philippe Sands - Hay Festival". hayfestival.com. 25 May 2014. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  72. ^ "Tippi Hedren talks to Philippe Sands - Hay Festival". hayfestival.com. Retrieved 27 March 2016.[permanent dead link‍]
  73. ^ Moss, Stephen (16 November 2016). "Philippe Sands: 'Alarm bells are ringing in this country'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  74. ^ Shaffi, Sarah (21 September 2015). "W&N buys title from lawyer Philippe Sands". The Bookseller. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  75. ^ Bernard-Henri Lévy (23 May 2016). "'East West Street,' by Philippe Sands". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 9 September 2016.
  76. ^ "Baillie Gifford Prize: Lawyer wins award for book about genocide". BBC News. 16 November 2016. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  77. ^ "The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize Archives". Slightly Foxed. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  78. ^ "Long List Announced For 2016 Cundill Prize In Historical Literature | Newsroom - McGill University". www.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  79. ^ "Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2017 Long List". Jewish Quarterly. 13 November 2016. Retrieved 19 November 2016.
  80. ^ "La Filière" (in French). 30 June 2021. Retrieved 30 December 2021.
  81. ^ Flood, Alison (15 November 2016). "Philippe Sands wins the 2016 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction". The Guardian.
  82. ^ Page, Benedicte (23 February 2017). "Sands and Gundar-Goshen win JQ Wingate Literary Prize". The Bookseller. Retrieved 6 April 2017.
  83. ^ Contreras, Isabel (31 October 2017). "Les deux lauréats du Prix du meilleur livre étranger 2017". Livres Hebdo.
  84. ^ Thomas, Vincy (23 March 2018). "Philippe Sands couronné par le Prix Montaigne de Bordeaux 2018". Livres Hebdo.
  85. ^ "Philippe Sands". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 4 October 2022.
  86. ^ "Lund University Honorary Doctors 2022". The Alumni Network Blog. 1 June 2022. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
  87. ^ "Honorary awards". Sheffield Hallam University. 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
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