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Felicity Nelson
Four out of the six winners of this year’s Rhodes Scholarship are law students.
The scholarship carries substantial prestige and offers free tuition at Oxford University.
Notable former winners include Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Bob Hawke and former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowen.
Joining this hall of fame this year is Harj Narulla (pictured), a law graduate from UNSW.
Mr Narulla has spent the past year researching at the NSW Court of Appeal under Justice Margaret Beazley, the President of the Court of Appeal at the NSW Supreme Court.
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“I’m really excited and grateful for the opportunity,” he said.
Mr Narulla is keenly interested in Indigenous issues. At UNSW he volunteered for mentoring programs and worked with the Aurora Project and the Indigenous Law Centre.
He plans to study comparative constitutional law models for the recognition of Indigenous peoples at Oxford and hopes to work for the Aboriginal Legal Service in the future.
“Harj is a great example. A brilliant student, but also someone who made big contributions to his world while a student,” said Professor David Dixon, the dean of the UNSW law faculty.
Professor Dixon said the interests of law students in studying overseas is “reflective of the changing nature of law”, which is no longer “just a domestic discipline”.
This year’s Rhodes scholars with backgrounds in law include: law and arts student Emilie McDonnell from the University of Tasmania; arts graduate and law student Matthew Pierri from the University of Melbourne; and Harriet Horsfall, who has studied a bachelor of justice at the Queensland University of Technology.
Two Rhodes scholars this year studied medicine, including Danielle Fitzpatrick from the University of Adelaide and Andrés Noé from the University of Western Australia.
