President of Ireland to travel to Manchester for honorary doctorate

President of Ireland Michael D Higgins is to travel to the University of Manchester on Tuesday where he will receive an honorary doctorate.

Mr Higgins is to be conferred on Tuesday evening with the Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Manchester’s chancellor Nazir Afzal in recognition of his “extensive and significant” contributions to literature and public life.

A conferral ceremony and a dinner held in the president’s honour will then take place at the Whitworth Art Gallery.

On Wednesday, the Irish president will also deliver the inaugural address in a new series of lectures called The John Kennedy Lecture Series, which will run at the university over the next five years.

Mr Higgins’ lecture is titled ‘Of the consciousness our times need in responding to interacting crises and the role of universities as spaces of discourse in facilitating it’.

The president’s office said Wednesday’s lecture is the first in a number of major lectures that Mr Higgins will deliver over the coming period, including one on food security upon his receipt of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Agricola Medal at a ceremony at Aras an Uachtarain on June 7.

Mr Higgins studied as a postgraduate at the University of Manchester from 1968 to 1971.