Former head of the Department of Law at the University of Guyana (UG) Dr Alicia Elias is the new Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago.
Professing to be “deeply honoured and humbled” at being given the opportunity to play a strategic role at the UWI law faculty, Elias said all praises were “due to God”.
While elated at her new role, Elias told Stabroek News yesterday that her focus now lies in bringing more academic transformation and excellence to the department.
The Guyanese attorney is a PhD holder in Energy and Environmental Law from Queen’s University in Canada where she received the Robert Sutherland Fellowship, Canadian Energy Law Foundation’s Graduate Law Scholarship, and the Queen’s Graduate Scholarship in Law. She is also a graduate of the Oxford and Houston universities where she obtained master’s degrees.
In 2015, she was a recipient of the United Nations Fellowship in International Law, in the Hague, in the Netherlands.
She related to this newspaper that while she is multi-disciplinary, her passion for academia and Oil and Gas Law remains. Elias specialises in Energy, Petroleum and Administrative Law.
“My major accomplishments are when I see my students excel in these fields,” she told Stabroek News.
With over 20 years’ experience as an energy and environmental law legal consultant, she has provided legal advice to several governments in the Caribbean region and to international organisations.
She was admitted to practice law in three jurisdictions: New York, US;, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
The author of the 2017 publication Offshore Energy Development in Disputed Maritime Waters, an International Energy Law Review, believes that she can offer relevant recommendations in relation to the effective management of Guyana’s nascent oil and gas sector.
