From major tender wins, international student success and research grants, to alumni awards and invitations, it's been an impressive month for our academics.

Macquarie law school team shines in the global Jessup moot competition
Congratulations to the Macquarie Law School team which made it to the global final 16 of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. The competition saw 600 teams register, 576 teams from 90 countries, with 2500 oralists and 16 Australian law teams competing, including all of the Go8. Our team performed remarkably well across the competition, with achievements such as:
- The Hardy C Dillard Award, 5th Place for Combined Memorial Scores
- 6th Best Individual Oralist
- 5th Best Overall Respondent Side
- 20th Best Overall Applicant Side
While USYD won the overall completion, and Bond University also reached the final 16, no other Australian law school reached that stage and Macquarie achieved the best combined tally of rankings of all Australian law schools. Congratulations to students (pictured above) Abbey Cooper, Caitlyn Hoffmann, Cara Boljevac, Madison Cotton, and Paul Kaletsis, their coach Fareed Qureshi, and Lecturer Dr. Shireen Daft, on this incredible achievement.

School of Education academics win major bid
Macquarie School of Education Associate Professor Fay Hadley with Professor Linda Harrison (MQ), Professor Sue Irvine (QUT) and Associate Professor Lennie Barblett (ECU) have won a tender bid for the ACECQA National Quality Framework Approved Learning Frameworks Update. The tripartite partnership team were awarded $669,763 from ACECQA to lead the revisions of the two Early Childhood frameworks – The Early Years Learning Framework (for prior to school settings) and the My Time Our Place Framework for outside school hours care services. This 13-month project will capture all stakeholders’ views across Australia, including children and young people’s voices on these frameworks to ensure the recommended updates are meaningful and grounded in both contemporary research as well as practice.

Funding for research into far-right extremists’ online ecosystems
A research team from the Department of Security Studies has been awarded a Category 2 funded research consultancy worth $46,000 by the United States Institute of Peace and the RESOLVE Network. The team, comprised of Julian Droogan, Lise Waldek, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, and PhD candidate Jade Hutchinson, will work on a project titled ‘Conceptualising racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist online ecosystems.’ The project will provide the first academic review and conceptualisation of online digital media ecosystems and how they are used by far-right extremists and terrorists. It will result in academic and applied outputs allowing scholars and policy makers to better understand and address the problem of far-right violent extremists’ use of the internet.

Law academic to address European Parliament about marine protected areas in Antarctica
Congratulations to Macquarie Law School Associate Professor Nengye Liu, who has been invited to address the European Parliament on World Ocean Day (8 June) regarding the environmental opportunities and geopolitical obstacles of establishing marine protected areas in Antarctica. The audience and panellists include a group of MEPs (e.g., Catherine Chabaud), EU Commissioners (e.g., Virginijus Sinkevičius, Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries), EU member state Ministers (e.g., Riccardo Serrao Santos, Minister of the Seas in Portugal), Ambassadors (e.g., Helen AGREN , Ambassador for the Ocean, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

Philosophy professor presented with Distinguished Alumni Award
Congratulations to Professor Wendy Rogers from the Department of Philosophy who has been awarded a Flinders University Distinguished Alumni Award. Wendy was recognised for her “distinguished leadership, advocacy and commitment to the field of medical ethics, including spearheading a ground-breaking investigation into the unethical use of human organs in research and becoming a leading activist in exposing organ transplant abuse in China.”