Appointments

Associate Professor Margaret McKerchar has been appointed Head of School at the Australian School of Taxation (ATAX) in the Faculty of Law. Margaret will take over the position from Professor Neil Warren.

Margaret joined ATAX in 2005 and has an international reputation as a leading tax researcher in taxpayer compliance. She is an Associate Professor in Taxation and an experienced teacher in accounting, business management and in the design and conduct of research.

Within the profession, she is the 2009 NSW President of CPA Australia and a member of both NSW Divisional Council and of CPA Australia's Tax Centre of Excellence. Margaret is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Australasian Tax Teachers Association (and is a past president of this Association) and of the Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting.

Achievements

Nicole Kuepper, lecturer and PhD candidate in the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, has been named as one of Australia’s top 100 leaders by The Australian newspaper.

Nicole was included in the list of young and emerging leaders set to make a substantial contribution to the nation’s future for her research into the production of cheap, low-tech solar cells which can deliver electricity in developing countries. The 24-year-old won two Australian Museum Eureka Prizes last year – the Young Leaders in Environmental Issues and Climate Change prize and the People’s Choice Award.

Peter Alexander, from the School of English, Media and Performing Arts, will be appointed Emeritus Professor upon his retirement.

Professor Alexander teaches English Literature at all levels with particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.

He is a literary biographer and has published pioneering studies of Alan Paton, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Les Murray.

Peter published the first scholarly edition of the Diary of Iris Vaughan, and is about to publish his 13th book, an edition of the Selected Letters of Alan Paton.

He has been a Visiting Fellow at Duke University, North Carolina, and at Clare Hall, Cambridge; Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Christ's College Cambridge, and Visiting Professor at Princeton University and at the University of North Carolina. Peter is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Vaughan Carr has been appointed Australia’s first Chair in Schizophrenia Epidemiology and Population Health at UNSW.

Vaughan is an internationally recognised schizophrenia researcher with 30 years’ experience in mental health research. His main research focus will be pinpointing new risk factors associated with schizophrenia.

The Chair will be based at the Mental Health Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and is a joint project between the Schizophrenia Research Institute and UNSW, with $2.125 million funding from NSW Health.

Vaughan will be working closely with health and education departments to set up record linkage through their databases and to determine risk factors and track health outcomes.

Read the full story on the UNSW News website.

Ed Santow, from the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, has been awarded a 2009 Future Summit Australian Leadership Award.

The awards recognise outstanding achievement from a new generation of leaders providing them with the opportunity to contribute to Australia's future vision.

Ed is the director of the Centre's Charter of Human Rights project and has been a vocal contributor to the debate about the need for a Bill of Rights in Australia.

The Future Summit is the nation's premier platform for the discussion of strategic trends and directions where Australia's business, government, academic and community leaders meet to develop actionable options for a sustainable, desirable and prosperous future.

Megan Davis, Director of UNSW’s Indigenous Law Centre, was recognised at the endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples last month.

In her address to parliament, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, thanked those who worked for years to draft the Declaration. Megan, a former UN Indigenous Fellow, was noted for her central role in the Declaration’s development.

“It has taken over two decades to develop this international instrument, which extensively elaborates upon what the right to self-determination means to Indigenous peoples around the world. Each article reflects a known case of state violation of indigenous human rights”, she said.

Megan, who is also a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law, welcomed the “historic and timely” endorsement of the Declaration which reverses the position of the previous government and fulfils a key election promise of the Labor Party.

Read the full the story on the UNSW News website.

Professor Colin Chesterman has been appointed as Emeritus Scientia Professor.

Colin was Foundation Director of the Centre for Vascular Research (CVC) for 16 years until 2008. He was also a Scientia Professor in the School of Medical Sciences and the Prince of Wales Clinical School.

His research focused on occlusive vascular disease including fibrinolysis, the characterisation and function of platelet granules.

He is a Past-President of the Australian Vascular Biology Society, a member of the Senior Advisory Council of the Scientific and Standardisation Committee of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH), and was President of the 20th Congress of the ISTH in Sydney in 2005.