Historian
and former Labour politician Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of London’s Victoria
and Albert Museum, has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law by
Northumbria University, Newcastle.
Dr Hunt,
who was M.P. for Stoke-on-Trent-Central from 2010-2017 and Shadow Education
Secretary between 2013 and 2015 under then Labour Party leader Ed Miliband,
attended Trinity College Cambridge, where he secured a first-class degree in
History. He was an Exchange Fellow at the University of Chicago before
completing his doctorate in Victorian history at the University of Cambridge in
2000.
He has
always had an interest in the intersection of science and the arts. From 1997
to 2000 he was a Special Adviser to Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury. He was an
Associate Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at King’s College,
Cambridge and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
His passion
for history came to the fore in 2001, when he was appointed Senior Lecturer in
History at Queen Mary, University of London. As well as presenting radio and
television history programmes for both the BBC and Channel 4, Tristram is also
the author of four history books, including the award-winning biography, “The
Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Frederick Engels.”
Dr Hunt had
been a Labour Party supporter in the 1990s, working on the landslide 1997
General Election campaign. In 2010,
Tristram was elected Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central and three years later
was appointed Shadow Minister for Education, then Shadow Secretary of State for
Education. During his Parliamentary career, he also served on the Speaker’s
Advisory Committee on Works of Art.
After
receiving his Honorary Degree from Northumbria University, Dr Hunt said: “I am immensely
humbled and grateful to receive such an honour from Northumbria, a thriving
university with a strong global outlook and a drive for research excellence
that shares so much with the V&A. Northumbria University and Tyne and Wear
Archives and Museums are at the heart of cultural life in the North East, and I
very much look forward to continuing our partnerships here in the future”.
Dr Hunt stood down from the House of Commons
in 2017 following his appointment as Director of the Victoria and Albert
Museum. In 2017 he oversaw the opening
of V&A Dundee, a central part of a £1 billion transformation of the city’s
waterfront. His priorities as Director of the V&A are focused on the transition
to a multi-site museum, the redesign of the Museum of Childhood, and the
development of a new museum and open access Collections and Research Centre in
Stratford, East London, on the site of the 2012 Olympic Park.
He is also
no stranger to Northumbria University, nor to Tyne and Wear Archives and
Museums (TWAM). In March last year he gave a lecture “V&A – The Civic and
the Global”, hosted in partnership between the University and TWAM, where he
praised the important academic work being carried out by the University. He was
also impressed with the long-term loans made to Northumbria by the Woon
Foundation, and with TWAM’s global mission to help people determine their place
in the world.
Dr Hunt actively
supports the importance of regional museums, and the vital contribution that
they make to civic life in Britain. The V&A has worked closely with
colleagues at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums for many years, and the
V&A’s touring exhibitions have travelled to Shipley Art Gallery, Hatton
Gallery, South Shields Museum and Laing Art Gallery.
With an
interest in the history of great exhibitions – the V&A itself born from the
Great Exhibition of 1851 – Tristram has been an advocate of the Great
Exhibition of the North. With his support, the V&A has provided important
content for the major hub exhibition at Great North Museum, in Newcastle.
