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10.01.2020

 

At a ceremony held in the National University of Ireland, 49 Merrion Square, on Friday 22nd November 2019 at 5pm, Professor Nolan NUI Pro-Vice Chancellor and President of Maynooth University conferred higher doctorates on published work on the following:

Now Director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights in Vienna, he was previously Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre at NUI Galway. He is currently Adjunct Professor in the Department of Law at Maynooth.

 

 

 

Since then, he has taught in a number of universities and colleges in Ireland and elsewhere. He has held professorships at Milltown Institute when it was an NUI recognised college and Loyola Marymount College, Los Angeles.

 

 

 

Noting that higher doctorates on published work are the highest degrees of the University, awarded to scholars of international distinction in their fields,  the NUI Registrar introduced each of the candidates for conferring. In each case, she referred to the comments of the external assessors who had considered their applications.

Introducing Michael O’Flaherty she quoted from the assessors’ reports as follows:

His work represents a very close engagement with human rights practice and policy but at the same ime retains the scholarly and disciplinary integrity of a legal academic.

In several of the areas in which he has worked the candidate has definitely added new knowledge of significance. In terms of the functioning of the United Nations human rights treaty monitoring, his early writings shed important light on the interactions of Ireland in particular with the system, while his later writings addressed the need for major reform of the overall system.

Perhaps the most original contributions that the author has made to the overall literature is his pioneering work on the role of professionalism in the context of United Nations field operations.

Finally, the author has also made an important contribution in terms of international efforts to clarify the human rights entitlements that exist in relation to sexual orientation. At a time when there was still widespread and deep-rooted discrimination in the vast majority of countries against sexual minorities, he undertook to lead and coordinate pioneering and diplomatic work which led to significant breakthroughs in practice.’

 

Introducing Santiago Sia, the Registrar quoted the following from the assessors’ reports:

By any standards, Professor Sia’s cv is enormously impressive. He has written, co-written or edited thirteen books and published more than sixty articles He has published mostly in the areas of process philosophy and theology, philosophy of religion, ethics, philosophy of education and Asian philosophy. He is a well known and leading thinker today in the area of process theism.

Sia’s work is known for attempting to advance a (process) view of God that avoids some of the classical problems of classical theism (e.g. that God cannot change, and that God is too remote from persons), while trying to show how the process view can respond to the problem of suffering. He is regarded as a world authority in these areas.

In his later career, Sia has published work relating to philosophy of education and ethics.. He has been able to bring his ideas to a much wider audience through his work…for example, as a consultant to some UN agencies. He is clearly seen as someone who has not only expertise but wisdom and whose gifts can benefit those outside philosophy and who are struggling with difficult questions from the perspective of public policy.

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Photos from the conferring

(click image to enlarge)

 

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