Fazle Hasan Abed, a Bangladeshi poverty campaigner and humanitarian, and Dr Santiago Calatrava-Valls, an architect and engineer, were made Doctors of Letters. Professor Erwin Hahn and Professor Barry Marshall were made Doctors of Science, and Mitsuko Uchida, a Japanese-born classical pianist, was made a Doctor of Music.

The honorands and senior members of the University, dressed in academic robes, walked in procession from Brasenose College to the Sheldonian Theatre, via the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian Library Quadrangle.