We are delighted to confirm that three prominent Somervillians have been elected as Honorary Fellows of Somerville College in June 2025.
An honorary fellowship is the college’s highest recognition for alumni and associates who have achieved distinction in public or professional life, conferred by the college’s Governing Body. This year, the three recipients of an honorary fellowship from Somerville College are Professor Kamila Hawthorne OBE, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners; Dr Anne Makena, Co-Director of the University of Oxford’s AfOx Initiative; and Professor Emma Smith, Oxford University’s Professor of Shakespeare Studies.
Our warmest congratulations to all three of our new Honorary Fellows.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE
Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE (née Ebrahim, 1978, Medicine) is Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, the UK’s largest medical college. She qualified from Somerville in 1984 and completed her GP training in 1988. Since then, Professor Hawthorne has served as a GP for 37 years and twice been named ‘GP of the Year’ prior to receiving an MBE in 2017 for services to General Practice. As Chair of the RCGP, Professor Hawthorne is responsible for setting the college’s policy direction and supporting its 50,000 members across issues including licensing, research and clinical standards. She is a tireless advocate for the importance of training excellent, caring and inclusive GPs for a global society. In light of this work and her role as a Bevan Commissioner, her contribution to guiding and sustaining our National Health Service cannot be overstated.
Professor Hawthorne commented of her Fellowship: “I am so very delighted to be receiving an Honorary Fellowship from Somerville – I feel I’ve completed a career ‘circle’ coming back to Somerville, where it all started for me as a young medical student with my life before me. What a great honour – thank you!”
Dr Anne Makena
Dr Anne Makena (2012, DPhil Chemical Biology) is Co-Director of the Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx), a vibrant platform for all things Africa at Oxford. Under Dr Makena’s guidance, AfOx is taking great strides in its core objective of making Africa a strategic priority. for the University of Oxford through equitable research partnerships between Oxford and African universities, and by increasing the number of African students pursuing postgraduate degrees in Oxford. Dr Makena has done tremendous work leading on fundraising and stakeholder engagement, on supporting the delivery of core AfOx programmes, and on developing AfOx’s overall strategy, including its ambitious – yet justified – aim to increase the number of African graduates at Oxford from 3 to 10%.
Responding to the news of her election to Honorary Fellow, Dr Makena commented: “I had no idea how profound and life-shaping the decision to come to Somerville would be! What began as an academic pursuit became a journey of friendship, collaboration, and purpose. Somerville gave me not just an academic home, but a community of deeply rooted thinkers and changemakers. I treasured my time here as a student and am equally grateful for the continued opportunity to collaborate with the College. To be named an Honorary Fellow is a deeply humbling honour, and one that I will hold with immense pride and gratitude.”
Professor Emma Smith
Professor Emma Smith (1988, English) is an internationally renowned Shakespeare scholar and current Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford. Professor Smith’s work explores the influence of Shakespeare on stage, print, and in wider culture. An associate scholar of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Professor Smith is a regular speaker at literary festivals, theatres, libraries, schools and universities, with extensive experience of both print and broadcast media. Her 2019 book This Is Shakespeare was a Sunday Times bestseller and her 2022 book Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize. Professor Emma Smith lives in Oxford with her partner Elizabeth and her next full-length work, The First Elizabethans, will be published by Penguin in 2026.
Of her election to Honorary Fellow, Professor Emma Smith commented, “I remember very clearly stepping into Somerville for the first time, on an open day in June 1987. I’d been visiting another college and thought Oxford wasn’t for me, and I popped in to look at Somerville because I had been reading Vera Brittain. A college of brick and flowers, with a large open, grassy centre, full of eccentric and inspiring women and a long library: it seemed a world away from those anally-retentive medieval quads and their histories of gatekeeping. I knew immediately I wanted to study here. I remain extraordinarily grateful for that life-changing opportunity, and to be a Somervillian.”