Sandi Toksvig received an honorary doctorate of science from Bournemouth University for her archaeology work, adding a science award to a career already tied to archaeology and anthropology from Cambridge. The honour follows her work on an Iron Age dig near Winterborne Kingston in Dorset, where she worked with Bournemouth University researchers and students.
Bournemouth University and Hidden Wonders
The award came after Toksvig worked with Bournemouth University academics Miles and Megan Russell on the 2025 Iron Age programme. The Channel 4 programme Hidden Wonders showed her taking part in a study suggesting the site’s lineage could be traced to a single woman, with communities centred on mothers and men joining women’s families rather than the other way round.
Toksvig said the doctorate carried extra weight for her because it was a doctor of science. “It's really thrilling. I've had honorary doctorates in the past but this is a doctor of science, which I just feel has got that bit more class to it.”
400 students at Bournemouth
She was one of 400 students to graduate from Bournemouth University during an earlier ceremony, a detail that put the honorary award into the same public setting as the university’s own degree celebrations. For the university, the choice linked the ceremony to work that moved beyond television into field archaeology and interpretation.
Megan Russell said Toksvig’s presence did more than draw attention to a programme. “What Sandi did for us is showcase to the whole of the UK the love and the care that archaeologists put into what we do and actually how emotional it can be for archaeologists,” she said.
Women in archaeology
Toksvig also used the moment to push a larger point about who gets to tell the story of the past. She said she wanted more women to join archaeology so history could be rewritten, even as the field has long been shaped by male-led interpretations. “We used to think that cave paintings were done by men between bison hunts and now they've analysed the fingerprints and we know that almost 90% of it was done by women - hanging around waiting for the pot to boil maybe,” she said.
That contradiction gives the award its edge: the university is not just honouring a broadcaster who turned up for a dig, but someone using public attention to argue for a different archaeological lens. Toksvig said the visit should not end with a certificate. “I don't come and take these things and then go away with a certificate,” she said. “I will try and get further involvement with the university, so I'm hoping it's the beginning of my relationship with Bournemouth.”
