The Deputy Head of the UQ Law School, Professor Ross Grantham, will receive a Doctor of Laws degree today, Wednesday, December 5 at a UQ graduation ceremony at 2pm at the UQ Centre, Union Road, St Lucia.
The Doctor of Laws is the highest academic award available in law. The award recognises his contribution to the law of restitution and corporate law.
Professor Grantham was awarded the degrees of Bachelor of Laws in 1984 and Master of Laws with Honours in 1987 by the University of Auckland.
In 1985, he was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand. He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Civil Laws by the University Oxford in 1994. Before coming to The University of Queensland in 2004, Professor Grantham was Professor of Commercial Law and Head of Department at the University of Auckland and Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Business Law.
Professor Grantham’s Doctor of Laws is entitled The Law of Restitution and the Law of Companies: The Quest for Coherence.
Professor Grantham’s work focuses on the theoretical nature of the registered company and, in particular, the implications of this nature for the integration of the company as a juristic entity into the general legal system.
Other ceremony highlights today include:
• Adjunct Professor in the UQ Business School, chartered accountant and management consultant Stephen Lonie will be guest speaker at the 11am ceremony for Commerce graduates.
• Student valedictorian at the 11am ceremony is Jesse King, of St Lucia, who will graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce with first class honours. Mr King said it was a “bit of a surprise” to be asked to be valedictorian. “I finished my undergraduate studies and went overseas, and then came back and did honours supervised by Dr Larelle Chapple of the UQ Business School,” he said. “It was an exploratory thesis on the determinants of private equity bids in Australia, as there is a lack of data on these markets.” Mr King, who will tell graduands about overcoming challenges to become successful, plans to travel some more before hoping to work on the
U.S. East Coast following his graduation.
• 2pm ceremony for Economics and Law graduates — the guest speaker will be the UQ Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Hay, AC, who will receive an Honorary Doctorate of Laws.
• Graduands at the 2pm ceremony also include the 2008 Rhodes Scholar Anna Kloeden, who already holds a Bachelor of Arts (Chinese) from UQ, and will receive her Bachelor of Laws. Ms Kloeden, from Westlake, will complete a Master of Laws at Oxford, focusing her research on how to strengthen the trade links between Australia and China without compromising the human rights of those involved. Twenty-two UQ law graduates have received the prestigious scholarship since 1938, including the past six consecutive years.
• 6pm ceremony for Management graduates — the guest speaker will be the Chair of the Advisory Board of the UQ Business School, Michael Smith, who is the Queensland Orchestra Managing Director.
• The student valedictorian at the 6pm ceremony is Amanda Fry, of Mitchelton, who will be awarded a Bachelor of Business Management with first class honours. Ms Fry completed her honours thesis supervised by Dr Ravi Pappu and Professor Bettina Cornwell, of the UQ Business School, She will present a paper at the American Marketing Association conference in February, 2008 in Texas, U.S. on the topic of “Branding and Celebrity Endorsement”.
• Graduands also include Master of Business Administration student Damian Vassallo, whose career has included surviving the tech stock crash, starting a business, and then being recruited by one of his own clients. Mr Vassallo recently received the UQ Business School Director's Award for Leadership.
• Fellow MBA graduand Ashwin Sreekumar, who had to face an employee demonstration at the age of 12, at his father's factory in India, has already received an award for service to the community at the UQ Business School's Top MBA Awards held last month. Among his achievements are teaching English to children in under-resourced government schools in India; working on The Million Minds Project launched by multinational chemical company, BASF; and participating in a tsunami rehabilitation project also while working for BASF.
Media: Jan King 0413 601 248.
