Honorary doctorate for trailblazing engineer and anti-hate educator
Engineer, researcher, educator and author, Dr Agnes Kaposi MBE, FREng, Churchill Fellow is to receive an honorary doctorate from London South Bank University (LSBU).
She is being honoured for her innovative contributions to engineering education, her advocacy against intolerance and hatred, and her work to advance engineering as a career for women.
Dr Kaposi led the Department of Electrical Engineering at LSBU from 1977, when the University was still South Bank Polytechnic. Over 10 years, she built one of the largest electrical engineering departments in the UK.
Leading at a time of change
Dr Kaposi joined South Bank with research experience in the telephone and computer industries. During the early days of digital technology, her research promoted digitisation and extended engineering design methods to software. As one of the few women in engineering leadership, she had to fight for fair recognition and was rarely paid equally to her male peers.
Electrical engineering at South Bank had a distinguished history, but when Dr Kaposi arrived, the department was outdated and struggling. She made it the department's mission to educate engineers for the computer age. To promote the quality of design and facilitating the use of computers, her department pioneered an integrated curriculum of hardware and software engineering. It also offered special opportunities for women and the graduate unemployed to join the computer engineering workforce.
By the time she left, South Bank's Electrical Engineering Department had more than 1,000 students, 200 postgraduates, a sizeable research school, and over 100 academic staff, including part-time experts from industry.
While at South Bank and for a decade after, Dr Kaposi worked as consultant in the UK and internationally. She was only the third woman elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
In recent years, she has focused on education for social cohesion, addressing government departments, industry, universities and schools, speaking from a lifetime's experience of prejudice, exclusion and persecution.
Paul Kett, London South Bank University (LSBU) Group CEO and Vice Chancellor, nominated Dr Kaposi for the award. He visited her in her home to talk abour her distinguished career.
He said: "Dr Kaposi's story is one of extraordinary resilience and achievement. She transformed LSBU's Department of Electrical Engineering at a time when very few women held similar positions — a legacy that still resonates as we work to make engineering a career genuinely accessible to all. Her lifelong commitment to educating others about the dangers of hatred and intolerance is a profound example of turning personal suffering into public purpose. It is a privilege to recognise her with this honorary doctorate."
From childhood survival to published memoir
Agnes Kaposi was born in Hungary in 1932. At just 11 years old, she survived the Debrecen ghetto and forced labour camps in Austria, narrowly escaping Auschwitz. She lost half her family in the Holocaust.
She gained her first degree from the Technical University of Budapest, before escaping to England after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.
She has written several engineering books and in 2020 published her memoir, Yellow Star–Red Star, on her wartime experiences and life under Communist rule. She was appointed MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust education and awareness.
Her latest book, Harmage and Hope: A Theory of Harm and Education for Building Hope, was published in June 2026 (Springer Nature). Co-written with Anja Ballis of LMU Munich and computer scientist Ian Pyle, it draws on the experiences of people who have suffered hate and discrimination, sets out a theory of harm, and offers education strategies for building social harmony.
She said: “Receiving this honour from London South Bank University means a great deal to me, and not only for what it says about the department we built together. This honour signifies recognition of the value of a lifetime's work for social justice. I hope it encourages others, especially young women engineers, to be determined and keep going even when the path is rocky."
Dr Kaposi will receive her honorary doctorate at LSBU's graduation ceremony on Monday 2 November 2026.
Main photo courtesy of Dr Agnes Kaposi. Photograher: Jay Kaposi.