Dr Rachel Carr OBE

Doctor of Laws

Wednesday 9 July 2025 - Orator: Lucy Collins

Listen to the full oration and honorary speech on SoundCloud.

Pro Vice-Chancellor,

Rachel Carr is a woman for whom social justice is a driving force in all she does.  A woman who balances righteous anger at the inequities in educational opportunity with faith in the human condition.  A woman whose professional achievements played out on national stage but were shaped by personal experience.  A woman who believes in the power of potential. This is her story. 

Rachel grew up in Gloucestershire with parents Tony and Iris, and her brother Graham. Iris left school at fourteen and Tony, despite a desire to progress to higher education, had to go straight into the world of work.  They were hard working, aspirational, and instilled the importance of education onto a young Rachel. 

Rachel attended the local village school where she met a defining figure in her life, Mrs Kennett. Described by Rachel as an inspirational teacher, she was ambitious for her children, enduringly positive and endlessly encouraging.  She spotted Rachel’s talent immediately and told her ‘your handwriting’s appalling, but you’re one of my best students’. 

Mrs Kennett was right.  School suited Rachel and she flourished.  She moved on to her local grammar school and then became the first in her family to progress to university.  She studied English at Kings College London, completed an MA, and then a PhD with a thesis combining the themes of access to higher education through characters in Victorian Literature.  

Rachel went on to become a senior lecturer at the University of West London and spent nearly a decade sharing her passion for learning, literature and language to her students.  And that should probably have been that; a career as an academic for Rachel with her love of the classroom.   

Except it wasn’t, and in the year 2000 the university decided to close Rachel’s course and encouraged her to head up a new academic unit.  But this wasn’t to be, so Rachel took voluntary redundancy, broke her leg and started to plan. She spent time reflecting on the career she’d had whilst observing the young people she was now surrounded by.   

Settled in West London, Rachel had long been an active member of her local community. She was a trustee of a charity based in a community centre, ran a youth group and volunteered with the Notting Hill carnival. She had a deep affinity with the families she worked with in the Lancaster West Estate and often wondered why the children she’d known since they were little, full of ideas and intelligence, never ended up in her lecture theatres. 

Rachel knew intellect wasn’t the barrier, but poverty and the lottery of inequality. Determined to do something about this, IntoUniversity was born.  Developed from the homework clubs she’d run in the community centre, the doors were first opened in 2002. 

By 2007 IntoUniversity had moved into other high-need London communities, extending beyond the capital to Bristol and Nottingham in 2011. There are now 45 centres in 28 towns and cities across England and Scotland, supporting over 50,000 students a year. 

Working at the heart of local communities every IntoUniversity centre offers an innovative programme that supports young people aged seven and up to realise their ambitions, achieve their academic potential, and gain experience in the world of work.  

The impact is impressive, with annual results highlighting the thousands of young people who secure a university place who otherwise wouldn’t have done so. We’re proud to fund two such centres - Bristol East and South - with many of our current students working as mentors, and former IntoUniversity students now studying with us. 

As you might expect, IntoUniversity has achieved national and international recognition.  It’s received countless prestigious honours, and in 2011 Rachel was awarded an OBE for her services to education. 

But for all the recognition IntoUniversity receives, at the heart of it is Rachel Carr.  A modest, self-effacing woman who channels her ambition through the brilliant young people she continues to work and live alongside. 

Twenty-five years later, as she listens to their hopes for their future, Rachel is reminded as to why IntoUniversity matters now, more than ever.  For whilst there’s still social injustice to fight, economic inequities to overcome and barriers to higher education to break, Rachel will be there.  

Because just as Mrs Kennett recognised the talent in Rachel in that Gloucestershire village school, so too does she in the children attending IntoUniversity centres across the country. They couldn’t wish for a better champion. 

Pro Vice-Chancellor, I present to you Rachel Carr as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.