ViSiBLE Patrons

The support of our patrons aligns us with cutting-edge research and the best of contemporary British theatre

Dame Harriet Walter

Since training at LAMDA, Harriet has worked extensively in theatre, television, film and radio. Most recently she was Livia in Women Beware Women at the Olivier NT. She is an associate artist with the RSC, where she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra alongside Patrick Stewart, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Lady Macbeth opposite Anthony Sher, The Duchess of Malfi, All’s Well That Ends Well (with Peggy Ashcroft) Twelfth Night and Three Sisters (winning an Olivier award for the last two). Harriet played Elizabeth Ist in Mary Stuart (Donmar, West End) for which she won the Evening Standard Award and was nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway transfer. Earlier theatre credits include Dinner, The Children’s Hour and Arcadia all at the NT and Three Birds Alighting on a Field, Cloud Nine, Hamlet and The Seagull all at the Royal Court.

Film credits include The Young Victoria (Queen Adelaide) Atonement, Bright Young Things, Sense and Sensibility and Louis Malle’s Milou et Mai.

She has published three books: Other People’s Shoes and Macbeth for the Faber series ‘Actors on Shakespeare’ & Facing It.

She was appointed a CBE in 2000 and DBE in the Honours List 2011

Professor Sir Michael Marmot

Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, and Immediate Past President of the World Medical Association.

He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (Bloomsbury: 2015) and Status Syndrome: how your place on the social gradient directly affects your health (Bloomsbury: 2004). Professor Marmot holds the Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014-2017 and is the recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 18 universities.

Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for over 40 years. He chairs the Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas, set up in 2015 by the World Health Organizations’ Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/ WHO). He was Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), which was set up by the World Health Organization in 2005, and produced the report entitled: ‘Closing the Gap in a Generation’ in August 2008.

At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010, which published its report ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ in February 2010. This was followed by the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO Euro in 2014. He chaired the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team and was a member of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. He set up and led a number of longitudinal cohort studies on the social gradient in health in the UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health (where he was head of department for 25 years): the Whitehall II Studies of British Civil Servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality; the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and several international research efforts on the social determinants of health.

He served as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2010-2011, and is President of the British Lung Foundation. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology; a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians.

He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years and in 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. Professor Marmot is a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.

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