The launch of the McAuslan Fund

  • 11 April 2014

On 2 April Robin Palmer attended the launch in Birkbeck College, London, of the McAuslan Fund set up to commemorate the life and work of the late Law Professor Patrick McAuslan who died in January. Below are a few words from Robin on the event.

“Martin Adams, Liz Daley and I wrote a combined appreciation of Patrick in a previous newsletter tribute and Liz and I also wrote individual pieces which were posted on Birkbeck’s tribute page.

It was a fine launch. The speeches were really good, a mix of the poignant and the entertaining, which well captured Patrick’s essence and clearly brought out the themes of social justice and making the law work in practice for poor people. I spoke to some of Patrick’s former students and learnt that they greatly appreciated his lectures, which didn’t surprise me at all.

Funding has now been secured for an initial scholarship for someone from East Africa to study law at Birkbeck. I hope that funds will later become available to support the kind of gatherings Patrick would have approved of.

Valerie Kelly, Research and Publications Officer in Birkbeck’s School of Law, who organized the launch, wrote to me afterwards to say that ‘it was really nice to have someone from Mokoro present, having heard about the organisation from Patrick.’