Professor David Clark was made an OBE by the Queen at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace last week. He received the honour for services to education and end of life research.David Clark OBE 650

Professor Clark, who leads the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group at the University’s Dumfries campus and is Professor of Medical Sociology, said: “I am absolutely thrilled to receive this recognition for the work that I do and the people that I work with. It is a great boost to our efforts in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Dumfries Campus and also to my wider engagement in the field of global end of life research.”David Clark OBE 300

He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Navarra in Spain and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern Denmark.

He founded the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University in 2003 and has wide-ranging interests in the history and global development of palliative care.

He has a particular knowledge of the life and work of Dame Cicely Saunders, has edited her letters and selected publications, and is now working on a new biography, to be published in 2018, the centenary of her birth. He recently completed a monograph on the history of palliative medicine from the 19th century, entitled To Comfort Always, published by Oxford University Press.

In 2015 he served the Scottish Government as Consulting Editor to its Strategic Framework for Action in Palliative and End of Life Care and assisted the Scottish Parliament in its enquiry We Need to Talk about Palliative Care.

A Vice President of Hospice UK, he is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and holds a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award for a four-year study (2015-19) entitled Global Interventions at the End of Life.


First published: 17 November 2017