Honorary Graduates
Profile: Keir Starmer QC
Keir Starmer QC is currently Director of Public Prosecutions and joint
head of Doughty Street Chambers. He was educated at Leeds University and St
Edmund Hall, Oxford, and has been a Fellow of the University’s Human Rights
Centre since 1998. He was Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland
Policing Board (2003-08) and was a member of the Foreign Secretary’s
Advisory Panel on the Death Penalty (2002-08). His appeals to the Privy
Council on behalf of death row prisoners from Caribbean states were
instrumental in the abolition of the mandatory death penalty in those
states, and as Director of Public Prosecutions he issued guidelines
regarding the prosecution of those involved in assisted suicide. In 2001 he
received the Human Rights Lawyer of the Year award, and in 2007 he was voted
QC of the year in the field of public law and human rights by Chambers
Directory of Legal Practitioners.