Honorary fellowships were conferred on the following people in the July and November ceremonies of 2012.
July ceremonies
Ann Pierson (now resides in a care home 2021)
In recognition of her outstanding contribution to the arts and creative writing (awarded July 2012).
John Myers
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the radio industry (awarded July 2012 | Deceased 01 June 2019)
http://myersmedia.co.uk/john-myers/
David Gould
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the campaign for peace and community cohesion (awarded July 2012).
Having lost a close relative in the London bombings in 2005, David Gould worked towards cultural and faith acceptance in Carlisle and raising awareness and need for integration. He worked toward seeing isolated minority ethnic communities gain confidence to express themselves and their culture with pride, breaking down the isolation due cultural barriers. He supports the Amnesty International Candle at Carlisle Cathedral. He was active in organising events in the city and schools to promote non-violence, community cohesion and interfaith understanding. Wider afield he worked with the Warrington Peace Centre and joined in their Conflict Resolution work between former combatants in Northern Ireland. Moving to the Midlands in 2014 he joined Sanctus St Marks, an organisation for the welfare of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Stoke-on-Trent where he acted as a Caseworker, a role combining his Social Work background with his Theological Training and his Counselling Skills. He also opened his home for a while, to asylum seekers rather than see them homeless. Post Covid he left the Church of England and joined the local Baptist Church where he had been leading worship for some years. Now into his mid-seventies he takes on half the preaching and is active in the pastoral and spiritual work of the church. This includes taking Holy Communion to the residents in Care Homes and participating in the outreach activities of the Church.
Stephen Borthwick
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the world of rugby union football. (awarded July 2012).
Steve was born in Carlisle in 1979 and lived in the city until the age of 10 when his family moved to Preston. He was captain of the Hutton Grammar School Rugby team and during a degree from the University of Bath in Economics and Politics joined Bath rugby club in 1998.
At Bath he played 246 senior games over the next ten years, captained at 21, before joining the Saracens in 2008. Steve gained 57 Test caps for England, touring North America, Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. He was part of the England squad that finished runners-up to South Africa in the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Between 2008 and 2010, Steve captained the England team on 21 occasions. Steve coached Japan at the 2015 Rugby World Cup and then became Coaching Coordinator and Forwards Coach of the England rugby team from 2015 until 2020, during which time England finished Runners-Up at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
From 2020 until 2022, Steve was Head Coach of Leicester Tigers Rugby Club, winning the Gallagher Premiership title in 2022. In December 2022, Steve was appointed as Head Coach of the England Senior Team, coaching the team as they won the bronze medal at the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
Graham Upton DL
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to higher education and to the University of Cumbria. (awarded July 2012)
Graham Upton was born in Birmingham and was educated in Australia, where he taught in secondary and special schools before moving back to the UK in 1972. He worked in Leeds Polytechnic and the University of Wales before moving to the University of Birmingham where he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Special Educational Needs and Educational Psychology. In September 1997, he took up the post of Vice-Chancellor at Oxford Brookes University which he held until he retired in August 2007. From 21 May 2010 until July 2011, Professor Upton was Interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cumbria. Since then, he has served as Interim Vice Chancellor of Wrexham Glyndŵr University, Birmingham City University, Bangor University and SOAS London. He is a former Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff of Oxfordshire. He is married to Bebe Speed.
Professor Shirley Reveley
In recognition of her outstanding contribution to nursing and the establishment of the nurse practitioner programme and service. (awarded July 2012)
Shirley trained as, midwife and health visitor and entered higher education in 1986 as a Nurse Teacher and Health Visitor Tutor. After a degree at The Open University and an MA and PhD at the University of Lancaster, Shirley worked at St Martin’s College from1992 -2005, becoming Head of School of Nursing and Midwifery. She established the first nurse practitioner service in Cumbria, co-published two textbooks and several articles before being invited to take up a Visiting Professorship at the University of Skovde in Sweden. In 2005 Shirley became the Director of Nursing at The Open University and its first Professor of Nursing. In 2007 she was promoted to the post of Dean in the Open University’s Faculty of Health and Social Care, before retiring in 2010 as an Emeritus Professor. Since retiring from the open University Shirley has been a non-Executive Director at Cumbria PCT, NCUHT and Chair of Cumbria Health on Call, and Associate Consultant at the Royal College of Nursing. She is currently Chair of Trustees of Hospice at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland.
Paul Rose
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the understanding of the natural world, the challenges of scientific research and his broadcasting work. (awarded July 2012)
Born in Elm Park, east London, Rose’s first job was at 16 in the Ford motor plant in Dagenham. In 1974 he moved to America and qualified as a mountaineer, diver, polar guide and yacht skipper. He ran the US Navy diver training programme at Great Lakes Naval Training Centre, Great Lakes and trained divers in the police, fire department and underwater recovery teams. He returned to Britain in 1988 and has been a mountain and polar guide, led expeditions across the ice-cap in Greenland, and provided logistics support for polar science expeditions. He was Base Commander of Rothera Research Station, Antarctica, for the British Antarctic Survey for 10 years until 2002, for which he was awarded the Queen’s Polar Medal. He received the US Polar Medal for his work with Nasa and the Mars Lander project, which involved climbing Mount Erebus, Antarctica’s active volcano. A mountain in Antarctica is named after him. Paul is the Head of Expeditions for National Geographic Pristine Seas and lives in Geneva Switzerland.
http://www.paulrose.org/
November ceremonies
Dr James (Jim) Lowery Graham OBE DL
In recognition of his support of higher education and his outstanding contribution to broadcasting (awarded November 2012).
Jim was Chairman and CEO, Border Television and Border Radio Holdings. During his tenure, Border consistently achieved the highest viewing figures on the ITV network, as well as developing programme production for Channel Four and elsewhere, winning a number of awards at home and overseas. He began his broadcasting career at Border, before joining the BBC as News Editor North, producing the first Yorkshire edition of the BBC’s nightly news magazine. From there he became Regional Television Manager, NE and Cumbria, in Newcastle, before joining BBC headquarters staff at Broadcasting House, London, as Head of Secretariat, serving the Board of Governors. He returned to Border, to resume a hands-on production career, as MD later CEO as the company developed, serving on ITV Council, ITV network’s governing body. ITV nominated him delegate to the international awards festival, the Prix Italia, Rome, where he became President, with involvement in the International Emmys, New York, Golden Rose, Switzerland and International Institute of Communications. It was at this time that I had a personal meeting with Pope John Paul, who memorably said: “you have in your hands a great instrument of communication, use it for the benefit of mankind”.
He holds the European Flag of Honour, was presented with the Beffroi d’Or by the French Prime Minister, inaugurating the Paris-based Circom Regionale and, in the UK, was made OBE and DL and is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society. He continues to contribute as Hon President of the Prix Italia and has acted for many years as programme judge at the Prix Italia and for other festivals in US and Europe.
He was made Hon Doctor at Northumbria University, Hon Fellow at University of Central Lancashire and his home university, Cumbria. He was born in Whitehaven but following retirement spends much of his time in Whistler BC, Canada and appears in the Ottawa Archives among new Canadian poets, following the production of three books of poetry. Poetry resulted in two poems appearing in the cultural magazine, ‘Lupine Review’, serving the Whistler-Vancouver corridor, as well as poems selected by Whistler Library, in a book commemorating 50 years since the resort’s inception’.
Jim spends his winters in the Canadian Rockies, where he and his wife, Annie have a home. Ski-ing and long-distance bike rides, in the Western spur of the Rockies, have been a mainstay of life in Canada, but somewhat in decline, at 93.
Professor Neil Mercer BSc, MA, PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS.
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of teacher education. (awarded November 2012)
Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, Director of Oracy Cambridge: the Centre for Effective Spoken Communication, a Life Fellow of the Cambridge University college Hughes Hall and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Before he joined Cambridge, he was Professor of Language and Communications at the Open University. He is a psychologist whose research has focused on the development of children’s spoken language and reasoning abilities and teachers’ role in that development. He has worked extensively and internationally with teachers, researchers and educational policy makers. He grew up in the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth.
In 2019 he was given the Oevre Award by the European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction for outstanding contributions to educational research; and in 2021 he was awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship by the British Educational Research Association. His books include Words and Minds, The Guided Construction of Knowledge, Exploring Talk in School, Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking, Interthinking: putting talk to work; and, in 2025, Oracy: the transformative power of finding your voice. He was co-editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education. A collection of his work, Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge was published in 2019.
Https://www.hughes.cam.ac.uk/academic/our-people/seniors-members/neil-mercer/
https://oracycambridge.org/
Julian Cooper
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the traditions of fine art and contemporary approach to mountain landscape painting. (awarded November 2012)
Julian Cooper was born in Grasmere, Cumbria in 1947, the youngest of the Heaton Cooper dynasty of landscape painters. He studied at Lancaster School of Art (1963-64) and Goldsmiths College School of Art (1964-69). Awarded the Boise Travelling Scholarship in 1969, he travelled in Europe and was resident at the British School at Rome (1969-70). He returned to the Lake District in 1975 and his work has ranged from narrative paintings based on Malcom Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano to a series of paintings about the assassination of the Brazilian union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes. He has since developed an international reputation as one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking mountain painters of his generation and has spent a life looking for places that carry a particular charge, finding them in some of the most inhospitable places on the planet. He now lives and works in Cockermouth, painting the multi-layered landscapes of north Cumbria, with the ambition of conveying the complexities and interplay of these human and natural systems in visual form. The Art of Julian Cooper, a book to be published in 2026 by Unicorn Press, contains over 200 images of the artist’s paintings with a text giving Cooper’s own account of the circumstances behind the work, following his development as a painter from art school in London to his move from abstraction towards figurative painting, and his return to Cumbria and beyond, to depict some of the great mountains of the world.
http://www.juliancooper.co.uk
Leo Houlding
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to adventure climbing and as an ambassador for the younger generation of climbers. (awarded November 2012)
Leo is a world-renowned rock climber, Expedition Leader & TV personality. Born in 1980 in Penrith and raised in the Eden Valley, he has spent his entire adult life exploring the more remote and spectacular corners of Earth, undertaking extreme adventures, and pioneering modern exploration. He has led major expeditions and hard first ascents on every continent from El Capitan to Everest from the Arctic to the Amazon and Antarctica. With roots on the rock, these days he is as much an explorer as a climber combining epic polar crossings and jungle journeys with big wall free climbs on recent projects. He has produced multiple award-winning films of these taking modern action sports to the most remote corners of Earth. He is a trustee of Outward Bound, and a patron of the Kendal Mountain Festival and Community Action Nepal.
leohoulding.com
Sarah Dunning OBE
In recognition of her outstanding contribution to business in the community and her charitable work in supporting Cumbrian initiatives. (awarded November 2012)
Sarah was born in Cumbria. She spent her early career in the City in London before returning to Cumbria to join her family business, the Westmorland Family which is best known for its motorway services, Tebay Services, Gloucester Services and Cairn Lodge. The business employs 1,200 people, is first and foremost a Cumbrian business and believes that its strength is built upon its commitment to all things local and its connection with its communities. Sarah is now Chair of the business, as well as holding a number of other charitable and business interests.
http://www.westmorlandfamily.com/
Mally Chung
In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the film and television industry.
Mally was born in Carlisle and studied Media at Cumbria Institute of the Arts. Whilst working on a student film a chance meeting with a BBC Location Manager resulted in him joining the BBC as Unit Manager for the drama “The Lakes” filmed around Lake Ullswater in 1998. During the next eight years he worked on a number of television programmes and films including “Dalziel & Pascoe”, “Clocking Off”, “Cutting It”, “Fat Friends” and “The Queen”.
Several years later he began working for the ‘family’ of James Bond on “Quantum of Solace” and “Skyfall”. Further film contracts include “Sherlock Holmes”, “Robin Hood”, War Horse”, Wrath of the Titans”, “Atonement” and “Fast and Furious 6”. Mally’s career now takes him to the far corners of the world but one which he manages to achieve whilst still living with his wife and family in Carlisle.
