2026 New Year Honours for LSE academics

Professor Tony Travers and Professor Jonathan Wadsworth have both been recognised with CBEs in the New Year Honours List 2026.

Professor Tony Travers, Visiting Professor in the Department of Government, Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy and Director of LSE London, has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Public Service.

Professor Travers’s research has been concerned with the evolution of London’s government and politics, including the abolition of the Greater London Councils and the Inner London Education Authority and latterly the creation of the Mayor and Assembly in 2000. He has also written extensively about the London boroughs and their politics. He chaired the London Finance Commission in 2013 and again in 2017 and has recently been appointed to BusinessLDN’s London Growth Commission. He has also been involved in research about local government policy and elections across the rest of the UK. He is an Honorary member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy and also of the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation.

Commenting on the award, Professor Travers said: “LSE’s role in the academic study of London has a long and proud history. Professor William Robson, a protégé of the Webbs and for decades an acknowledged global expert on urban government, set up the Greater London Group in 1958 to give evidence to the Royal Commission on London Government whose report provided the basis for the creation of today’s ‘Greater London’ and the London boroughs. Professor Robson, the Greater London Group and today’s LSE London create an unbroken link back to the early years of the LSE. I have been privileged to work with many LSE colleagues and those from other parts of the London university system, on research, conferences, and publications about the city, its services and government. It is a great honour to have been recognised in this way.”

Professor Jonathan Wadsworth, Associate at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance and Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway, University of London, has also been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Services to Economics and to Public Service.

Professor Wadsworth's research interests are in applied economics, particularly issues of wages, employment, health, immigration and workless households – the concept and measurement of which he co-developed. In addition to publishing in refereed academic journals, he is the editor of the State of Working Britain volumes and blogs, which attempt to summarise key developments in the UK labour market to a non-academic audience. Jonathan is an Associate of CReAM - the Centre for the Analysis and Research in Migration at University College London and was appointed as an independent commissioner to the Low Pay Commission in January 2022.