The Right Honourable The Baroness Henig CBE DL |
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Born |
Ruth Beatrice Munzer 10 November 1943 Leicester, England |
Nationality | English |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | Wyggeston Girls School, Leicester |
Occupation |
Historian Politician |
Notable work | dof |
Awards |
Commander of the Order of the British Empire Deputy Lieutenant |
Ruth Beatrice Henig, Baroness Henig CBE, DL (born Ruth Beatrice Munzer on 10 November 1943) is a British academic historian and Labour Party politician.
Her parents were Kurt and Elfrieda Munzer, Jewish refugees who came to the United Kingdom from the Netherlands in 1940. Henig was married in 1966 to fellow-academic Stanley Henig, who shortly afterwards became a Labour Member of Parliament (MP). They have two children, and divorced in 1993. Their son, Simon Henig, is leader of Durham County Council, chair of the North East Combined Authority, and a lecturer in politics at Sunderland University. She remarried in 1994 to Jack Johnstone.
Henig was educated at Wyggeston Girls Grammar School in Leicester, and at Bedford College, London, where she graduated in 1965 with a B.A. in history. She was awarded a PhD in history from Lancaster University in 1978, where she was a lecturer in Modern European History. She has written several books and pamphlets on 20th-century international history.
She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from 1997 to 2000, and in April 2006, she was one of six people to receive the first Honorary Fellowships of Lancaster University.
Henig was a Labour member of Lancashire County Council from 1981 to 2005, serving as the Council's chair from 1999 to 2000. She was also Chair of Lancashire Police Authority from 1995 to 2005 and chair of the Association of Police Authorities from 1997 to 2005, when she became the Association's president. She was also a member of the National Criminal Justice Board from 2003 to 2005.