The 2020 recipient of the annual Tim Hawkins Memorial Scholarship is Ms Taylor Bachand.
The Scholarship is named in honour of Tim Hawkins who tragically lost his life in the Bali bombings in 2002. Tim had graduated from the University of Tasmania with 1st class honours in Law several years earlier and his death, at just 28 years of age, was a devastating loss. The Hawkins Family and the University established a fund to which government, friends and colleagues of Tim contributed which supports the annual award of the Scholarship to honour Tim’s memory.
The Scholarship enables the recipient to travel to The Hague to act as the legal assistant to the Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Professor Tim McCormack, who is also the Dean of the University of Tasmania Law School. In this role Tim Hawkins Scholars are placed in the privileged position of being able to interact extensively with trial teams and investigators undertaking research on war crimes issues that are arising on a weekly basis in the Office of the Prosecutor.
Taylor is a Canadian national who came to Hobart to study at the University of Tasmania on exchange during her undergraduate degree in English Literature at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She enjoyed her Tasmanian experience so much that she decided to return to Hobart to study Law. Taylor’s Bachelor of Laws with 1st Class Honours was conferred in December 2019. According to Professor McCormack, Taylor ‘was one of our best students in the 2019 graduating cohort. In addition to outstanding academic results Taylor was editor of the University of Tasmania Law Review, administrator of the Clinical Legal Practice Course and a real contributor to the intellectual life of our Law School’.
Sir Guy Green, Chair of the Tim Hawkins Memorial Scholarship Selection Committee, said that he was delighted to announce the award:
Taylor is another outstanding recipient of the award. I am sure that she will enhance the reputation which Tim Hawkins Scholars have built up over the years and the esteem in which the University of Tasmania and its Law School are held in The Hague.
Taylor took up her position as Legal Assistant in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague in January this year. She was working in the Court until restrictions to contain the spread of COVID-19 forced a closure of the Court building. Taylor is currently conducting her International Criminal Court work remotely but she hopes that when restrictions are eased, she will be able to resume her work in the Court building sometime before the end of 2020.
For further information or questions please contact Professor Tim McCormack.
Read more about the Tim Hawkins Memorial Scholarship.
