Alumni Awards, Souvenirs & OM News

Voting for the MGS 2025 Alumni Awards is now open: closing date is Friday 31st October. The winners will be announced at the Old Boys’ Dinner held on 22^nd November 2025.

2025 Alumni Award nominees

Imran Ahmed (89-96), founder and organiser of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (based in Washington) was one of twelve winners of the Elevate Prize for 2025. The prize celebrates “leaders, visionaries and activists on a mission to solve some of the world’s most critical challenges”, and the winners share $300,000 in funding for their causes. In January 2025 Ahmed gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee about misinformation and hate speech on social media. In 2024 a US judge threw out a law suit by Elon Musk who tried to sue the CCDH for saying hate speech had increased on twitter since Musk bought the platform. Ahmed was editor of the MGS newspaper, the New Mancunian.

Roger Brugge (68-75) was honoured by Royal Meteorological Society in 2025 with their annual award for outstanding contribution to the society or profession. Brugge developed his interest in meteorology when, as an MGS pupil, he built his own DIY weather station in his back garden, partly inspired by a geography teacher who displays daily reports on his noticeboard.” Brugge was recognised for his outreach work to schools and other community groups, whilst working at Reading University from 1991-2022. He is the author of Setting Up a Weather Station and Understanding the Weather.

Jonathan Marshall (89-96) was in the McLaren team which won the World Constructors’ Championship for the 2024 Formula One [F1] motor-racing season. Marshall has been McLaren’s director of vehicle performance for F1 since 2022, having worked in motorsport since 2001 when he was still a student. It was McLaren’s first Constructors’ Championship since 1998.

Philip Newall (59-66) was recognised in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours List for Australia, and awarded the member of the Order of Australia (AM) - equivalent to a British MBE - for “significant service to audiology education and research, and to the community”. Newall is an emeritus professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, where he taught and researched for 27 years. Since 2008 Newall and his wife Cristy have also made dozens of trips to Samoa and the Philippines, working on a voluntary basis to fit hearing aids for children who wouldn’t otherwise get an education or jobs.

Harry Thompson (07-12) became the Hyrox AG World Champion in Chicago in June this year, a brutal fitness sport which was only invented in Germany in 2017, and which involves both running and exercises at work-out stations. And that cycle is repeated eight times. Remarkably, Thompson only took up Hyrox in 2022, but did so well in his first competitive race that he won his age group and qualified for that year’s world championships in Las Vegas. Thompson now takes Hyrox so seriously that in June 2024 he took a 12-month break from his job as a corporate lawyer with Slaughter and May to focus on being a competitor in a sport which offers hundreds of thousands of pounds in prize money.

David Walker (67-75) the Bishop of Manchester, was appointed in April 2025 as Convenor to the Lords Spiritual - whose job is to co-ordinate the work of the 26 Anglican bishops in the House of Lords. Walker, who has sat in the Lords since 2020. will probably serve as convener for only a couple of years, as he will reach 70 in 2027, the age when Anglican bishops normally retire.

VOTE NOW TO HELP DECIDE THE WINNER OF THE 2025 OLD MANCUNIAN ALUMNI AWARD

The Old Mancunian Alumni Awards honour the exceptional achievements of our former pupils. Recipients of these awards will have demonstrated that Old Mancunians from a wide variety of backgrounds, all with roots at MGS, excel in their chosen fields.

In 2024  the Old Mancunian community and Sixth formers voted for three winners: Brian Groom (66-73), Derek Wax (73-80), and Ben Shalom (05-12). Photographer and OM Sefton Samuels (42-47) was nominated for a posthumous award to acknowledge the contribution of his portraits of notable Old Mancunians which hang on the corridors of MGS and are featured on the homepage of this website.

 
Our previous award recipients can be viewed on the MGS Life website
Read the latest version of The Old Mancunian magazine to see previous nominees and winners

Read more about Old Mancunians with Honours