Professor Thomas Waelde, the executive director of the University of Dundee's Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy is to be succeeded as head of the department by Dr Philip Andrews-Speed.
A former executive with BP and academic director of CEPMLP, Dr Andrews-Speed is originally a geologist, who took a degree of Master of Laws in Natural Resources and Energy with distinction from the centre.
Philip was the centre's first business development officer, then lecturer in energy policy and petroleum and mineral taxation. He set up the flourishing CEPMLP China Energy Programme, won several contracts and has published widely, often with CEPMLP colleagues, on the Energy Charter Treaty, Chinese energy policy and petroleum tax. As senior lecturer and academic director, he took on increasing responsibilities in managing the day-to-day teaching operations of the Centre, and also its executive training activities.
When Thomas Waelde, then the principal UN Inter-regional adviser on investment, petroleum and mineral law, was appointed to head the centre in 1991, it had an intake of four graduate students. He proposed a radical and comprehensive strategy of globalisation and interdisciplinarity, aiming at a variety of mutually supportive and synergistic degree programmes, benchmarked against the leading LLM programme at Harvard University.
Under his leadership over 10 years, CEPMLP has become the internationally leading graduate school in its field. Student numbers have increased to 200 matriculated, and an intake this year of 100, making it the largest graduate programme of its kind in Scotland. Staff numbers have grown in tandem from two to over 30. Meanwhile fee income has increased from £10,000 in 1991 to close to £1 million in 2001. During this time Professor Waelde acquired a number of distinctions including the Jean-Monnet Chair awarded after EU-wide competition. He will continue to serve as professor of international economic, energy and natural resources law in CEPMLP.