Honorary graduates 2010-11

Shami Chakrabarti (LLD)

Thursday 15 July 2010, 2:30pm

Shami Chakrabarti has been Director of Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) since September 2003. Shami first joined Liberty as In-House Counsel in 2001. She became heavily involved in its engagement with the ‘War on Terror’ and with the defence and promotion of human rights values in Parliament, the Courts and wider society.

A Barrister by background, she was called to the Bar in 1994 after graduating from the London School of Economics and worked as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 until 2001.

Since becoming Liberty’s Director she has written, spoken and broadcast widely on the importance of the post- WW2 human rights framework as an essential component of democratic society. She is Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, a Governor of the London School of Economics and the British Film Institute, and a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and a Master of the Bench of Middle Temple.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2007 Queen’s Birthday Honours.