Serageldin was awarded an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, on Friday 11 December 2009. He received his parchment from University Chancellor Mary Robinson. Trinity College Public Orator Professor Anna Chahoud described Serageldin as a humanist, a scientist, an educator, a leader: a truly Alexandrian scholar”. Before the award ceremony, Serageldin delivered a wide- ranging public lecture entitled “Memory, Culture and Hope: Reinventing Western-Islamic Relations” in which he said that both the Western and Islamic worlds must accept pluralism and differences of opinion, if we were to succeed in building bridges between the two cultures. Trinity College builds on its four-hundred-year-old tradition of scholarship to confirm its position as one of the great universities of the world, providing a liberal environment where independence of thought is highly valued.