Dundee University to honour Brodies’ Joyce Cullen

The University of Dundee is to honour a leading lawyer this month.

Joyce Cullen, along with children’s author Pamela Butchart and Dr Niall Elliott, Team GB’s chief medical officer for the Olympics, will be awarded honorary degrees.

All three are already graduates of the university and have gone on to considerable success in their chosen fields.

“In choosing our honorary graduands we look for people who are inspiring to our students and staff, and I am particularly delighted that we are honouring three of our own alumni, who have shown where a degree from Dundee can take you,” said Professor Sir Pete Downes, principal and vice-chancellor of the University.

“They have shown excellence and achievement in abundance and in completely different areas – literature, law and medicine. They illustrate the tremendous impact our own graduates are having in the world.”

Ms Cullen graduated with a law degree from the university in 1979 and has since made an exceptionally meritorious contribution to law in Scotland. She is now widely regarded as one of Scotland’s foremost litigators. She is a partner at Brodies LLP and served as chairman from 2004 to 2013.

Nominated by the scottish ministers, she served as a member of the General Teaching Council, Scotland for two terms, from 1998 to 2006, representing the public interest. She was recently appointed as a non-executive member of the joint management board of the Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General in Scotland.

She is governor of The New School, Butterstone, which aims to help young people who find mainstream education difficult to access, and chair in Scotland of the Two Percent Club, which addresses the issue of under-representation of women at the top of corporate UK.

Ms Cullen will receive her honorary degree at the afternoon ceremony (2:30pm) on November 17.