People

University team rises to the challenge

Enterprising students from the University of Essex competed against 15 other university teams in The Prince’s Trust fundraising challenge Million Makers.

Team Essex came second in the competition, with the results announced after the star-studded Celebrate Success Awards in London, where the team rubbed shoulders with guests such as Tess Daly, Vernon Kay and Sir Michael Caine.

Over three months, Team Essex raised over £1,800 through a number of successful events including Krispy Kreme doughnut day, a treasure hunt competition and bag packing at Waitrose supermarket in Colchester. The Million Makers experience proved invaluable to the Essex students as it gave them the opportunity to develop real life business skills outside the realm of academia.

The Prince’s Trust is one of the best-known UK youth charities, working with young people who are not in education, training or work, supporting them to fulfil their potential. Million Makers was set up to help the Prince’s Trust raise the £1 million needed to run its programs on a weekly basis.

Professor elected to govern Inn

Professor Geoff Gilbert of the School of Law has been called as a Bencher of the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court to which all barristers must belong.

His election as one of the 400 Benchers who govern the Inn, which has around 8,000 members, is recognition of his eminence as an academic lawyer in international human rights law, international refugee law and international criminal law.

Most Benchers are judges or Queen’s Counsel, but recently Middle Temple has expanded its governing body to draw on a broader range of experience.

Professor Gilbert was called as a barrister in 1980. As an Academic Bencher, he will now have a vote on the new directions Middle Temple plans to take to fit a career at the Bar for the twenty first century. His new role will also help law students at Essex contemplating a career at the Bar to obtain professional advice.

Professor Gilbert has spent his career in academia, but has maintained links with the Bar throughout. He has advised solicitors and barristers in several cases and in 2008 appeared before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Washington DC on behalf of a client of REDRESS, the London-based Non Governmental Organisation that helps torture survivors obtain justice and reparation.

In the past year, he has provided expert opinions in two cases, in Canada and the UK. His academic writings have been cited by lawyers and judges to support their arguments and analysis of the law.

On several occasions, he has also been appointed by the United Nations and the Council of Europe to train judges and lawyers in transitional societies on human rights, going to Sarajevo shortly after the Dayton Accords and to Pristina, Kosovo.

 

Also in the printed March edition of Wyvern:

• Are we working well?
• Develop your future