Te Pae Tawhiti Postgraduate Scholarship for Alexander Young

Alexander is pursuing a LLM in the USA. He intends to study indigenous cultural approaches to land use, particularly in relation to wetlands, and assess how indigenous cultural knowledge might be applied to climate change adaptation frameworks.

Borrin Foundation Te Pae Tawhiti Postgraduate Scholarship

About Alex

Alex is of Kenyan-Indian and Welsh heritage. He was born in Yorkshire and emigrated with his family to Aotearoa as a child. After attending Kristin school, he obtained an LLB(Hons)/BSc (Geography) conjoint degree from the University of Auckland/ Waipapa Taumata Rau. There he received several first in course awards, the EC Adams Memorial Prize in Land Law, represented New Zealand at the International Criminal Court Moot in the Hague and published his honours dissertation: “Wastelands “which might doubtless be easily drained”: a contextual study of the drainage of the Hauraki Plains” in the New Zealand Journal of Environmental Law. Following graduation, Alex worked as a Judicial Clerk at the High Court of New Zealand/Te Kōti Matua o Aotearoa at Auckland/Tamaki Makaurau. He clerked for Jagose J in 2020 and Davison and Toogood JJ in 2021. Alex is presently a solicitor at the specialist litigation firm, Wilson Harle.

 

What Alex is studying

In late 2024 Alex, with the assistance of the Borrin Foundation’s grant will commence an LLM at a university in the United States of America. His study will focus on environmental law and indigenous people’s law. He intends to study indigenous cultural approaches to land use, particularly in relation to wetlands, and assess how indigenous cultural knowledge might be applied to climate change adaptation frameworks. He hopes the study will give primacy to indigenous cultural knowledge in the hope it might be applied via legal mechanisms to assist in adapting to the evolving effects of climate change.

 

Scholarship amount

$60,000

“I appreciate the Borrin Foundation’s provision of assistance to those who’s academic and professional journeys have not been without obstacles. The grant will enable pursuit of an intellectual rigorous and engaging course of postgraduate legal study, that may facilitate contribution to Aotearoa’s environmental legal and policy frameworks.”

– Alexander Young