University of Essex - Notable Alumni

Notable Alumni

The former President of Costa Rica, Óscar Arias, completed his doctorate in Political Science at the University in 1973, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. Ex-Vice President of Costa Rica, Kevin Casas Zamora, also completed his studies in Essex, earning a MA in Latin American Government & Politics in 1993. In Oct 2010, the Nobel Economics prize was jointly awarded to Christopher A. Pissarides, who had completed his BA and MA in Economics at the University of Essex in the early 1970s. Other political figures educated at Essex include the foreign ministers of Slovenia (Dimitrij Rupel) & Iraq (Hoshyar Zebari), Conservative Party MPs Virginia Bottomley and John Bercow, now Speaker of the House of Commons, Labour Party MP Siobhain McDonagh, Pakistani Social Activist Omar Asghar Khan, South African politician Thozamile Botha and Singapore social activist James Gomez (MA 1994). Two of those convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions connected to The Angry Brigade, Hilary Creek and Anna Mendleson, had been to Essex University but left without taking their degrees.

Notable alumni in the field of the Humanities and Media include Stephen Daldry and Mike Leigh, who both studied at the East 15 Acting School (part of the University of Essex since 2001), the Artistic Director William Burdett-Coutts (MA Drama), the Documentary Filmmaker Nick Broomfield, filmmaker David Yates, the TV comedy producer Geoff Posner, the Malaysian Poet Kee Thuan Chye, the veteran BBC Correspondent Brian Hanrahan, the novelists Lucy Ellman, Jonathan Wilson, Tim Binding, John Lawton, as well as the Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri. Musicians include jazz guitarist John Etheridge and jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon.

In the field of architecture, world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who was commissioned to rebuild the World Trade Center Site in New York City, attended Essex and completed an MA in the History and Theory of Architecture in 1972. The architectural historian Alberto Pérez-Gómez, subsequently head of the History and Theory of Architecture program at McGill University in Canada, obtained his M.A. and PhD degrees at Essex, graduating in 1975. The architect Frank Anatole, a member of the design team of the London Eye, graduated from Essex in 1983 with a degree in Literature.

Many of the university's graduates have gone on to staff university departments worldwide. Examples include the late Professor Erkin Bairam (Economics, Otago), Professor Kusuma Karunaratne (Sinhala, Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and Vice-Chancellor, Colombo), Dr. Farish A. Noor (NTU), Professor Michael Taylor (Politics, Washington) and Professor Jean Drèze (Economics, Delhi). It has been estimated that half of the sociology professors in UK Higher Education have completed all or part of their education at Essex. Some graduates have returned to Essex to hold positions within the university's academic departments. These include the philosopher Simon Critchley, Dean of International Development, Martin Henson and the Director of Essex's Human Right's Centre, John Packer.