New Year Honours for the Christ Church community

Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics at University College London (UCL), a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the Office for Budget Responsibility, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

After completing her undergraduate degree at Australia’s Murdoch University, Professor Carlin came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, completing both her MPhil and DPhil degrees at Christ Church in 1984 and 1987 respectively. During and following her doctoral studies, she was also a Lecturer in Economics at the House. In 1986, after three years at Christ Church, she joined UCL’s Department of Economics, where she has remained ever since. Her research spans macroeconomic modelling and economic policy, with a particular focus on connecting theory to real-world outcomes.

In 2013, Professor Carlin co-founded Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics (CORE), which she now directs. The initiative has transformed the teaching of economics by offering a freely available, research-led curriculum grounded in empirical evidence and real-world problems.

Professor Carlin’s contributions to economics and economic education have been widely recognised. She was appointed CBE in 2016 for services to economics and public finance, received the Economics Network Outstanding Career Achievement Award in 2019, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023. She is also a Fellow of the European Economic Association and serves as Vice President of the International Economic Association.

In recognition of her outstanding contribution to economics, Professor Carlin has been appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in this year’s New Year Honours.

Responding to the news, Professor Carlin said: ‘My first teaching post was as a Lecturer at Christ Church. Working with Michael Bacharach shaped both my research and teaching, encouraging me to bridge the divide between micro- and macroeconomics.

‘This honour reflects the power of the academic community to bring the best research on the most important questions into the classroom – something the CORE project has sought to achieve for economics.’

David Mabey is Professor of Communicable Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and a former President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH).

A physician specialising in infectious and tropical diseases, Professor Mabey read Medicine at Christ Church from 1968. After completing his medical training, he joined the Medical Research Council unit in The Gambia in 1978, later leading clinical services from 1982 to 1986. In 1986, he joined LSHTM as a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Sciences and was appointed Professor of Communicable Diseases in 1994. Alongside his academic work, he served as an Honorary Consultant Physician at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London from 1987 to 2019.

At LSHTM, Professor Mabey has held several senior leadership roles, including Head of the Clinical Research Unit from 1995 to 2002 and Director of the Wellcome Trust Bloomsbury Centre for Clinical Tropical Medicine and Global Health Research from 1995 to 2018. He has also played a significant role in global health policy, serving on advisory bodies of the World Health Organization, including the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for Reproductive Health and Research.

In recognition of his contributions to global health, Professor Mabey was appointed CBE in 2014 and received the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health in 2020. In this year’s honours, he has also been appointed a Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG).

Professor Mabey reflected on his career: ‘When I was studying medicine in the early 1970s, we believed infectious diseases were largely a problem of the past, following breakthroughs such as penicillin developed by the Floreys and Norman Heatley, who taught us pathology in South Parks Road. However, when I began work as a young doctor at the MRC unit in The Gambia in 1978, I learned that until recently around half of all children in rural communities had died from infectious diseases before their fifth birthday.

‘Since 1986, I have been based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, working with colleagues from across the world, and together we have seen substantial progress in improving the health of neglected populations in low- and middle-income countries.’

Andrew Steptoe is Professor of Psychology and Epidemiology at University College London. He read Natural Sciences at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, before coming up to Oxford in 1972, where he was awarded a DPhil in Medicine in 1976. From 1975, during his doctoral studies at Magdalen College, he also held a Research Lectureship at Christ Church.

In 1977 Professor Steptoe moved to St George’s Hospital Medical School, where he became Professor and Head of Department in 1988. He joined UCL in 2000 as British Heart Foundation Professor of Psychology, a post he held until 2016. His subsequent leadership roles at UCL included Deputy Head and then Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, followed by Director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care from 2011 to 2017.

Professor Steptoe is the former President of the International Society of Behavioural Medicine and a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Psychological Society, Academia Europaea, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society of Biology. He was the founding editor of the British Journal of Health Psychology and has held editorial roles across a wide range of leading journals. He currently directs both the Psychobiology Group at UCL and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Professor Steptoe has published more than 800 peer-reviewed articles and is the author or editor of 20 books, including the Handbook of Behavioral Medicine (2010) and the International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology (2018). Since 2018 he has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics, placing him in the top 1% of researchers worldwide by citation impact across two fields.

In the 2026 New Year Honours, Professor Steptoe was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to behavioural science.

‘I am delighted to receive this honour in recognition of the importance of behavioural science to disease prevention and health promotion,’ he said. ‘There have been tremendous advances in understanding the social, behavioural and emotional influences on health across the life course, and I am proud to have contributed to this progress.’

Dr George Williamson, Chief Executive Officer of His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC), has been recognised in the 2026 New Year Honours for his distinguished service to UK national security.

HMGCC is a UK government organisation specialising in national security engineering, developing critical tools and technologies that help protect the country. Dr Williamson has led the Centre since 2021, overseeing a period of profound transformation in its ways of working.

Dr Williamson came up to Christ Church in 1991 to read Classics and later completed a DPhil in Ancient History at the House. He went on to hold a Kennedy Memorial Scholarship at Harvard University before returning to Oxford as a Lecturer in Ancient History at Corpus Christi College.

After leaving academia, Dr Williamson embarked on a career in the UK Diplomatic Service that spanned more than 20 years. He held senior posts both in the UK and overseas within what is now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and most recently served as a Director General with responsibility for technology.

As CEO of HMGCC, Dr Williamson has guided the organisation through the most significant change in its 88-year history. Under his leadership, the Centre has expanded beyond a solely in-house model of design and manufacture to become a more open and collaborative organisation, working closely with partners in industry and academia.

This shift has enabled national security organisations in the UK and internationally to draw on a far wider range of technological innovation at a time of rapid global change and increasing threat. The transformation has strengthened the UK’s ability to respond to evolving adversaries and emerging technologies.

Reflecting on his appointment as a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG), Dr Williamson said: ‘I was honoured to receive a CMG in recognition of work at the intersection of national security and frontier technologies. It reflects the efforts of many colleagues, and the enduring influence of the values of service and responsibility shaped for me at Christ Church.’