In recognition of his outstanding scholarly achievements, Sir David was in January 2024 appointed Honorary Fellow at the University of Cambridge via its Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD).
“Sir David’s outstanding academic achievements and the depth of his scholarly pursuits have caught the attention of our esteemed institution”, said Prof Nazia M Habib, Founder and Director of the CRSD “we are truly excited about the potential intellectual contributions he could bring to our close-knit academic community.”
The CRSD is dedicated to fostering sustainable, equitable, and resilient futures where diverse stakeholders have the power to transform, at scale, the systems within which they operate. They facilitate and accelerate the development of new, workable approaches to some of the world’s most intractable problems. They use and develop interdisciplinary tools and techniques drawn from systems thinking and social sciences to catalyse and institutionalise transformation.
The Khalili Foundation is supporting the CRSD’s Deliberative Space project to research faith-inspired deliberation for peacebuilding which will inform the design of a new deliberation model for the Commonwealth’s peacebuilding missions.
This follows Sir David’s long-standing connections with several of the world’s most respected centres of learning. He is a graduate, Associate Research Professor and Honorary Fellow of the University of London, and he was the longest serving governor in the history of SOAS. He is also an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford, where he is a Member of the Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors, and in May 2005 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts London. In the United States, he was appointed to the International Board of Overseers at Tufts University in 1997, and in 2003 received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Boston University, where he also served as a member of the Board of Governors.
