University College London honours 59 students at first Qatar graduation ceremony

University College London (UCL) Qatar, a partner of Qatar Foundation and Qatar Museums, has celebrated the achievements of its first 59 graduating students at a ceremony on its Education City campus. Graduates shared the occasion in front of an audience of 300 guests that included family, friends, faculty and guests from Qatar and the UK. Held at the Auditorium of the Georgetown University building where the UCL Qatar campus is situated, the ceremony honoured students from 21 countries. A total of 17 Qatari nationals were among the graduating class, across Master’s degree programmes in Library and Information Studies, Museum Studies, Archaeology and Conservation, as well as a Diploma in Academic Research and Methods. Guests in attendance included prominent Qatari entrepreneur HE Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim al-Thani and British ambassador Nicholas Hopton. Addressing the graduates, Hopton highlighted the long-term relationship between Qatar and the UK. Prof Anthony Smith, UCL vice-provost for Education and Student Affairs, conferred the students with their degrees. Prof Smith said, “When UCL entered into a partnership with Qatar Foundation and Qatar Museums to open a campus in Qatar, we envisaged a centre of excellence where students from Qatar and from all corners of the globe could receive an education in cultural heritage of the very highest calibre. Today, those ambitions have been fulfilled.”Prof Thilo Rehren, director of UCL Qatar, added: “The UCL Institute of Archaeology in London is the largest department for cultural heritage teaching in the world, and is consistently rated as the best in the UK. To now see highly talented Qatari candidates coming through their Master’s degree programmes with us at UCL Qatar, and continuing on with their careers, means that Qatar faces a very bright future in its museums and heritage sector. ” As representatives from the student body, Sheikha Nouf Mubarak Saif al-Thani and Btool Hashem Mohamed al-Sayed reflected upon their time at UCL Qatar through their speeches.