Professor Baroness Ruth Lister CBE
Doctor of Laws

Professor Lister is emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University and a Labour peer. She is a former director of the Child Poverty Action Group and is now its honorary president. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work in social science and as an antipoverty campaigner.

She served on the Commission on Social Justice, the Opsahl Commission into the Future of Northern Ireland, the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty and the National Equality Panel. She is also a founding academician of the Academy for Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2009. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010.

She has published widely on poverty and social exclusion, welfare state reform, gender and citizenship. She has been a tireless antipoverty campaigner, children’s rights activist and feminist having played a leading role in, amongst others, the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. She has served on several government panels, most notably on the Commission for Social Justice.