Celebrating our most recent graduates with spectacular in-person ceremonies

Sunshine and smiles for over 5,000 graduates and their guests at UCL’s July 2022 Graduation Ceremonies, held on campus in Bloomsbury

In July 2022, UCL’s most recent alumni joined together on campus with their UCL community, family and friends in 33 separate ceremonies over 11 days to celebrate their graduation.

These in-person Graduation Ceremonies offered a chance for our Postgraduate cohorts, as well as our new medical doctors, to come together with staff, family and friends to celebrate their achievements in a joyful and festive atmosphere. 

The ceremonies themselves took place at Logan Hall, an auditorium at the heart of IOE, UCL’s faculty of education and society. Further celebrations took place with drinks receptions in the UCL Main Quad, giving guests a chance to toast to their success and take photos of this memorable moment with one another.

These events give our graduates the opportunity to celebrate all their hard work and effort over their years at UCL. Joining together with peers and the rest of the UCL community, they can reflect on their time at UCL and look forward to their futures, with their degrees in hand.

Over 5,000 graduates and 11,000 guests attended the July celebrations, and livestreaming of the events meant that another 63,000 people from over 140 countries tuned in to share the celebrations with their loved ones. A further 300,000 viewed or engaged with UCL social media coverage of the celebrations, including over 233,000 impressions on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. 

Our Graduates had a wonderful time, telling us that: "It has been so special to be able to celebrate alongside all my friends and bring my family, too," and that it was a culmination of years of studying – “after so many years of hard work, today it finally feels real – I’m a Dr!”. Others were happy to be on campus after the pandemic: "A big thank you for a really well organised and special day yesterday. So lovely to have a post-Covid celebration!"

We were delighted to include messages from notable alumni including Dr Bryony Mathew, British Ambassador to Iceland and a former UCL PhD student in Neuroscience; Matthew Barzun, former US Ambassador to the UK, a UCL Honorary Fellow, Mr Shouzi Chew, CFO of Bytedance and CEO of TikTok, who has a BSc in Economics from UCL; and Dame Clare Marx, former Chair of the General Medical Council and former President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, who studied medicine at UCL. You can watch their speeches on the UCL Graduations website.

Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Pro-Provost (Bicentennial), Outgoing Vice-President (External Engagement), said: “Teams from across UCL have come together to deliver 33 ceremonies and welcome thousands of graduates and their loved ones to our campus. Seeing the campus filled with such a celebratory atmosphere has been rewarding and a reminder of how integral the moment of graduation is to so many students’ university experience.”

“It has been energising to see and hear what these celebrations have meant to them. You can see snippets of this through creative vlogs made by our graduates and videos of the quad busy with celebrations in the sunshine.”

Graduations are a hugely important part of the student experience, and they could not have gone ahead without the help of many people pulling together across the university to make them happen. Professor Genn says, “My list of thanks is numerous, with so many individuals going above and beyond to deliver graduations and working flexibly and collaboratively to find solutions when they were needed.

"A particular thanks goes to teams in Vice-President External Engagement, Office of the Vice-President (Advancement), Faculties, Estates, Education & Student Experience and so many more, including academic and professional services staff in Platform Parties and across campus, whose presence made the ceremonies more meaningful and rewarding for the graduates.”

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