Every year, honorary degrees are awarded to inspirational people for special recognition of their exceptional achievements in their field.

Professor Chris Day, Vice Chancellor and President of Newcastle University, said: “These honorary degrees recognise the dedication and talent of some truly outstanding individuals.”

Professor Dame Anne Johnson

Professor Dame Anne Johnson is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Centre of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London.  After training in medicine in Cambridge and Newcastle, she specialised in Epidemiology and Public Health, and has worked in research in the epidemiology and prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted infections and other infectious diseases for over 35 years. 

Known internationally for her ground-breaking work, Professor Dame Johnson was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize by the Faculty of Public Health in 2016 and was made Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours List. In December 2020 she was elected President of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Dame Johnson was made a Honorary Doctor of Medicine.

She said: “I am absolutely delighted to be honoured in this way by Newcastle University and  to receive this degree in the city of my birth. The University taught me to be a doctor in the 1970s , through a highly innovative, integrated approach to  teaching medicine.  That experience gave me so many of the building blocks on which my career studying the epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases was  based.”