Romila Thapar gets doctorate from Oxford

LONDON: Romila Thapar, Emeritus Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University has been conferred the prestigious honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the Oxford University.
Chancellor of the University Lord Roy Jenkins conferred the degree on Thapar for her excellence in the field of academics, at a function here on Thursday.
Author of many seminal works on the history of ancient India, Thapar has pioneered both the study of the legends of early Indian history as myth and the integration of the critical use of archaeology and art history with written sources.
Thapar has held visiting academic posts in Europe, American and Japan.
Along with Thapar, six others including Professor John Coetzee, winner of the Booker Prize in 1999, were also conferred with honorary degrees.
While Coetzee, who is currently working as Professor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago, received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, Dame Rosalyn Higgins, who made legal history by becoming the first woman to be elected as a judge of the International court of Justice got the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.
Other recipients of the honour were Lord Rothschild, Chairman of investment bank Five Arrows Ltd (Doctor of Civil Law), Paul Scofield, regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation (Doctor of letters), Dr Arno Penzias, Nobel aureate and former Vice-President of Research at Bell Laboratories (Doctor of Science) and Professor Shirley Tilghman, President of Princeton University (Doctor of Science).