51¸£ÀûÉç

Skip to main content
Dawn Bonfield
Fellow

Professor Dawn Bonfield MBE FREng

Honorary Fellow; Professor of Practice, Engineering for Sustainable Development, King's College London

Website
Social media

Biography

Dawn Bonfield MBE FREng is an engineer and Honorary Fellow at 51¸£ÀûÉç, Cambridge. She is Professor of Practice in Sustainable Development at King's College London, and Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University, working within engineering to address the Sustainable Development Goals; as well as equity, diversity and inclusion in the engineering sector. She is President of the Commonwealth Engineers' Council, and a UK representative and Executive Board Member of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO). She is the Founder & Director of Towards Vision, a not-for-profit which works towards increasing diversity and inclusion in engineering, and she is founder of Magnificent Women, a social enterprise exploring the history of women in engineering. She is former CEO of the Women's Engineering Society (WES), and founder of International Women in Engineering Day (INWED), an international awareness day that occurs on 23 June annually.

Research Interests

As a Professor of Practice, the main driver of my work is action orientated activity rather than research, but on the research side I focus on the topic of inclusive engineering (which ensures that engineering outcomes are as free as possible from bias and discrimination); as well as engineering education for sustainable development.

Degrees

  • Materials Science, Bath University

Honours

  • MBE
  • Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
  • Fellow, Institution of Civil Engineers
  • Honorary Fellow, Institution of Structural Engineers
  • HonDEng, Bath University
  • HonDoc, Cranfield University

Awards & Prizes

  • Honorary Doctorate from Cranfield University, 2024
  • (2024)
  • Top 35 of the World’s Most Influential Women Engineers by Forbes/Academic Influence (2021)
  • Top 20 WISE Award winner from past 20 years of WISE Awards (2020)
  • Isabel Hardwich Award winner, Women’s Engineering Society (2020)
  • Honorary Doctor of Engineering, Bath University (2019)
  • Named #2 in Top 100 Influential Women in Engineering List, Inclusive Boards/Financial Times (2019)
  • (2017)
  • Honorary Fellowship of Institution of Structural Engineers (2017)
  • MBE for 'Services to the promotion of diversity in engineering’ (2016)
  • in Engineering (2016)
  • Global Engineering Deans Council (GECD) / Airbus Global Diversity Award Finalist (2016)
  • WISE Award and an Association Congress Award for the INWED campaign (2015)

 

Subject
Engineering