Professor Lucinda Platt awarded OBE

Professor Lucinda Platt, a Research Associate at our Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), has been awarded an OBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours list.

A quantitative sociologist, Professor Platt is Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was awarded the honour for services to the social sciences.

Her research and teaching focuses on inequalities relating to ethnicity and migration, gender and disability. She also works on identity, child poverty and the methodology and history of social surveys.

Among her many roles, Professor Platt is currently co-investigator on ISER’s Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, leading and championing the ethnicity strand of the study.

Professor Platt, who worked at Essex for ten years, has also published numerous book chapters on poverty, social mobility and inequality, as well as reports commissioned by government departments.

There was also an OBE for Essex alumnus Philip Long, who is Director of Scotland’s design museum, V&A Dundee.

He gained a Masters in Museum and Gallery Studies at Essex in 1988 and has worked in museums and galleries throughout a professional career of more than 20 years, and contributed to the development of many other arts organisations and initiatives. Before being Director of V&A Dundee he was Senior Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland, where he specialised in historical and contemporary Scottish art and design.

As an acknowledged expert in Scottish art and design, Philip Long has organised numerous exhibitions and written highly praised publications and articles, including on Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish Colourists, the architect Basil Spence, as well as on numerous contemporary artists and designers.

Passionate about culture in Scotland, and about the impact creativity can have on people's lives, he was awarded the OBE for services to heritage and culture.

Essex Honorary Graduate Rose Tremain was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours for services to writing.

The author, who already has a CBE, received the Honorary Degree from Essex in 2006. Her novels and short stories have been published worldwide in 27 countries and have won many prizes, including the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award (for Music & Silence) and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 (for The Road Home). Restoration was filmed in 1995 and a stage version was produced in 2009.

Picture of Professor Lucinda Platt courtesy of LSE