UNB grants honorary doctorates to deserving individuals who exemplify those values cherished by its academic community. The following individual will receive an honorary degree at the Spring Convocation Ceremony.
Dr. Margaret MacMillan will receive an honorary doctorate of letters at The University of New Brunswick Saint John campus’s 49th Spring Convocation Ceremony on Friday, May 17.
After earning a bachelor of arts in modern history from the University of Toronto, she went on to complete a bachelor of philosophy in politics and a doctor of philosophy at Oxford University. She would eventually become the Provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto before assuming the role of the fifth Warden of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
Dr. MacMillan is an award-winning author and influential historian who currently is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto and an emeritus professor of international history at Oxford University.
Dr. MacMillan is a scholar who is a sought-after media commentator on both history and current international relations. Her best-selling, critically acclaimed books, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, are two of the most influential studies ever written on WWI.
A New York Times best-selling author, Dr. MacMillan has won many awards for her writing, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. She is the first woman to receive the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Canada. She is a trustee of the Imperial War Museum and the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna).
In 2006, she was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada and became a Companion in 2016. In 2022, Dr. MacMillan was recognized by Queen Elizabeth II with an Order of Merit, a special mark of honour conferred by the Sovereign on individuals of exceptional distinction in the arts, learning, sciences and other areas such as public service.