Past alumni events

On Friday 3 October 2008, the Birkbeck School of Law, in association with the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, hosted a visit from Dr Giancarlo De Cataldo. Dr De Cataldo is a criminal court judge in Rome and a prominent novelist, screenwriter, playwright, essayist, editor and translator. Amongst many other well-known works he is the author of the prize-winning novel, Romanzo Criminale (Einaudi 2002), and a co-screenwriter of Michele Placido’s internationally acclaimed film of the same name, which will be screened during Dr De Cataldo’s visit . He has emerged as a leading voice in the genre of noir italiano, editing Crimini (Einaudi/Bitter Lemon Press 2007) and co-editing Crimini Italiani (Einaudi 2008).
The programme included a screening of Romanzo Criminale followed by a seminar and discussion with Dr De Cataldo and a drinks reception

Thursday 26th June 2008 at 6.30-8.30pm
Justice Edwin Cameron - a visiting Judge in the Law School at Birkbeck - together with Lady Justice Arden of the Court of Appeal, talked about the impact of human rights legislation upon judicial decision-making in England and South Africa. Justice Cameron has a long and distinguished career as a human rights lawyer. While he was Professor of Law at the University of Witwatersrand Centre for Applied Legal Studies he co-drafted the Charter of Rights on AIDS and HIV, co-founded the AIDS Consortium and founded and was the first director of the AIDS Law Project. He was also appointed to the High Court in 1995 and is now appointed to South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal. This workshop was the first event he hosted in his role as Visiting Judge in the Law School.

Thursday 17th July 2008 at 5.30-8.00pm Venue: Room B33 Malet Street (main building)
The Honourable Justice Michael Kirby gave a lecture entitled ‘Sexuality Law Reform - a failure of the Commonwealth of Nations’. Justice Kirby was appointed to Australia's Supreme Court, the High Court of Australia in February 1996 and is due to retire from that post in 2009. He is regarded as the inheritor and keeper of the Australian High Court's "progressive tradition" and his judgments are regarded as liberal in their approach as well as exhibiting compassion and thoughtfulness. He is well known for his dissenting judicial opinions and received Australia's highest civil honour when he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1991 and in the same year was awarded the Human Rights Medal.

This event was held on 18th January 2008, and was held at the Birkbeck Cinema at Gordon Square. There was a screening of the film Twelve Angry Men, followed by a staff-led discussion. We also gave out the prizes awarded by the LLB exam board in 2007.

We held another successful party in the Malet Street gardens on 23rd July 2007. Many alumni attended with their families, together with LLM and postgraduate students who completed their studies in 2007. We were entertained by a steel band and the weather was kind to us once again.

Following the great success of our Summer Alumni Party in July 2006, we held a Book Reading and Wine Event on Wednesday 6 December 2006, 6.30 - 8.30 pm. The event was held at Foyle's Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB
The speaker at the event was Elizabeth Woodcraft, author of Good Bad Woman and Babyface. The central character of these legal thrillers is Frankie Richmond, 'a London barrister long on attitude and short on lucrative work'. Reviewers highlight the racy plots, the humour, the realistic portrait of Motown, and it's all wrapped up with a gentle but clear search for justice. In 2001 The Guardian reported that Elizabeth's first novel, Good Bad Woman, was one of the top ten books by women writers of that year. For more information please see Elizabeth's website at http://www.elizabethwoodcraft.com/home.html