Pro-Vice-Chancellor, it gives me great pleasure to present Dr Navjot Sawhney for the degree award of Doctor of Engineering, in recognition of his extraordinary work to relieve the global burden of washing clothes by hand.

Nav is the founder of The Washing Machine Project, an organisation that has developed the Divya washing machine, a hand-cranked machine that reduces the burden of handwashing laundry – a daily challenge faced by up to 50% of the world’s population and one that particularly affects women and girls living in low-income and displaced communities worldwide. Many spend up to 20 hours a week washing clothes.

The Divya machine, named after a neighbour he met during a sabbatical in South India, uses roughly a third of the water of a standard electric machine and washes 75% faster than by hand. This work has already impacted 105,000 people and is expected to scale up rapidly in the coming years as the Washing Machine Project establishes a dedicated manufacturing facility in India. The Divya was named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025.

Nav worked as an engineer after graduation from Queen Mary University, London, but as he puts it, he quickly realised he didn’t want to spend his time making vacuum cleaners for rich people. He travelled to India and observed how his neighbour - Divya – spent many hours manually washing clothes. When he left India, he promised he would make her a washing machine.

Nav joined Bath University in 2018 as a student on our Humanitarianism, Conflict and Development MSc course. He instantly impressed us all with his immense commitment to tackling humanitarian challenges. As a masters student he was already honing his plans for TWMP and pursued this with his characteristic drive and energy.

This was not without its challenges, however. On a field trip to Jordan, Nav missed some of our carefully arranged sessions. He had, it turned out, double-booked us against his own meetings with the UN. As his lecturers, we weren’t sure whether to feel stood up or ask him to put in a good word for us.

Nav was also a great supporter of his fellow students and this is something I’m delighted that he’s been able to continue working closely with other Bath graduates at TWMP and offering placement opportunities to dozens of others.

Since its establishment in 2019, The Washing Machine Project has scaled rapidly, impacting people across the world from refugee camps in Iraq and Gaza, to schools in Kenya, from farming communities in Cote d’Ivoire, to women’s groups in India. In 2024, Nav was able to return to India to deliver a washing machine to his neighbour Divya and fulfil his promise to her. TWMP has become an important thought leader, pushing the issue of manual clothes washing up the development agenda, and publishing a landmark report – 'The Global Laundry Divide' – which draws on University of Bath research.

In bridging engineering and the social sciences, Nav is a living expression of Bath’s defining strength - its connected, interdisciplinary approach to real-world problems. As Nav has said, 'fall in love with the problem, because the solution will always change'. This perfectly captures what we try to teach at Bath – to solve problems, we have to first work hard to properly understand them in all their complexity. Few have embodied this as whole-heartedly as Nav.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor, I present to you Dr Navjot Sawhney, who is eminently worthy to receive the degree of Doctor of Engineering, honoris causa.