Teacher of the Year award for Warwick Law lecturer

A Warwick lecturer has been voted ‘National Law Teacher of the Year’.

Dr. Gary Watt, who teaches trust law and law and literature, beat off competition from Kings College, Reading and Leeds to win the £3,000 prize awarded by Oxford University Press and an additional £1,000 grant.

An overwhelmed Dr. Watt said: “Teaching keeps you honest, you cannot teach without passion. For me it is much more than giving information to my students, I want them to be inspired by what they are learning.”

The prize, conceived in 2004 “to promote the importance of teachers and teaching and in doing so to recognize the vital role that teachers play in the education of tomorrow’s lawyers”, was awarded in memory of Alistair MacQueen, one of the judges last year.

Chrissy Vassilou, one of Dr. Watt’s students, seemed to agree with the judges.

“He does teach things a bit differently compared to some of the other lecturers. His lectures are interactive, he breaks things down, and, most importantly, he puts complex things in simple terms – I think students really appreciate this.”

Dr. Watt, the first from his family to enter university, said “the open access scheme is something that I firmly believe in”.

After studying at Oxford, he has taught in Italy and France before returning to the country to continue teaching and research, and assuming the editorship of Law and Humanities, a journal published by Hart.

An author of a number of books covering a wide range of legal studies, Dr. Watt will publish a new work this year titled Equity Stirring: The Story of Justice Beyond Law.