The Tamil Nadu National Law University organised a five-day long Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on International Law at its campus from June 29 to July 03, 2019 to enhance the teaching and research skills of early-career academics and research scholars actively engaged in the scholarship on International Law in India.The principle aim of the FDP was to provide the participants with an opportunity to learn about the teaching methods deployed by various faculty members in different law schools across the country, help them acquire new research skills and make them aware of the contemporary developments that have taken place in various niche areas in International Law that have a significant bearing upon the future of international legal framework in that respective area.
One of the other unique features of the programme was the Memorial Roundtable to Celebrate the Life and Works of Prof. C.H. Alexandrowicz which was scheduled on the second of the FDP, on June 30, 2019. Prof. Alexandrowicz is special to India in more than one ways. He is probably the only academic in the immediate post-independence era to have made the journey from the West to India where he remained for more than a decade and helped in establishing the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Madras in the year 1951. During his tenure as the Head of the Department of Legal Studies, University of Madras from the year 1951 to 1961, he started a Master’s degree course in International Law, which was the first of its kind in India. This Roundtable became special because a befitting tribute was paid to Prof. Alexandrowicz in the land of Tamil Nadu, the place which has deep-rooted and indelible ties with the extraordinary legal luminary.
The FDP attracted some of the most eminent scholars in International Law in India, which included Prof. B.S.Chimni, Prof. V.G.Hegde, Prof. M. Gandhi, Prof. Manoj Kumar Sinha, Dr.PrabhashRanjan, Prof. SandeepaBhat and Prof. ShijuMazhuvanchery. Except the latter two, all other resource persons participated in the Roundtable where they underscored various important facets of the life and work of Prof. Alexandrowicz. All resource persons lead customized sessions in areas of their expertise in International Law throughout the length of the programme. The resource persons were also kind enough to spare sufficient time for participants outside the Conference Hall.
At the end of the programme, Prof. Kamala Sankaran,the Vice-Chancellor of TNNLU, joined Mr.Abhimanyu Singh, Assistant Professor of Law at TNNLU and the Faculty Coordinator of the programme, in emphasising upon the importance of engaging with international law in the age of globalisation where an academic of law cannot afford to ignore the discipline anymore and urged the early-career academics to incorporate comparative perspectives into whatever courses they are awarded to teach at their respective institutions. She also expressed her profound gratitude to the resource persons for sparing their time generously at the FDP and thanked the participants for showing great enthusiasm during the sessions and playing a phenomenal role in making the event a success.
