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The Sheridan Fellowship celebrates a decade of nurturing talent in legal academia
2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the Sheridan Fellowship Programme. Named after NUS Law founding Dean Lionel Astor Sheridan, the programme was intended to serve as a bridge between undergraduate study or work in the legal profession and a tenure-track academic position with a strong foundation in Singapore law. For over a decade, the programme has offered a unique opportunity to the best and brightest in Singapore to kickstart their interest and passion for an academic career.
Joseph Lau who is currently pursuing a doctorate at Melbourne Law School commented, “The kind of support which the Sheridan Fellows programme gives to young scholars trying to break into academia is really unique. I don’t think there’s a comparable programme outside of Singapore.”
The structure of the programme allows for candidates to be appointed for two years, teaching half the standard faculty load, with considerable time freed up for research and writing supported by a team of mentors which includes Andrew Simester, Ernest Lim, Tan Cheng Han, James Penner, Andrew Halpin and Tan Zhong Xing, as well as active participation in the life of the faculty.
Selene Tanne, who is in her second year of the fellowship, has benefitted from both official and unofficial moments of mentorship. She shared, “Official experiences include research workshops that help us to understand more about the craft involved in academia (e.g., research, writing, editing). Unofficial experiences include conversations with mentors over meals or coffee, during which they would generously share about their own experiences and help me to navigate some of the questions that I’m facing about research and/or teaching.”
Assistant Professor Tan Weiming appreciated how the programme was structured. He commented, “The scheme requires junior academics to teach only half the usual teaching load. This gave me valuable time to hone my teaching and research craft and allowed me to reflect on the type of scholar I wanted to be.”
According to Associate Professor Tan Zhong Xing, Director of the Sheridan Fellowship Programme, the programme is distinctive in giving candidates a high degree of autonomy in crafting their research direction and projects. “They have the opportunity to present work and receive feedback at faculty-wide workshops and other avenues, the chance to teach students at NUS Law, and receive sponsorship for postgraduate studies often at the top law faculties in the world, upon successful completion of the two-year period.”
Assistant Professor Marcus Teo, who was previously on the programme could attest to this. “The two best things about the Sheridan Fellowship Programme are the financial support it gives you and the community it introduces you to. At the start of one’s academic career, one needs time and mental space to do quality research, and also the means to be able to pursue (usually expensive) graduate degrees at prestigious universities. Both of these would have been impossible for me without the opportunities the Sheridan Fellowship provides.”
Since 2014, NUS Law has had over ten intakes of Sheridan Fellows, specialising in a wide variety of legal fields, as well as publishing significant work in internationally-recognised law journals and book presses. Sheridan Fellows have pursued further studies and research at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and various other leading institutions, and many have transitioned to lectureships and tenure track positions after completing the fellowship.
In earlier years, Sheridan Fellows’ projects centred on established and core fields of legal research. These include tort and contract law, restitution, commercial law, equity, property and trusts, corporate law and securities regulation, constitutional law, criminal law and evidence, and legal history.
This has broadened in recent years, with Sheridan Fellows also venturing into medical law and ethics, disability law, neurolaw, intellectual property, data protection and privacy, artificial intelligence, climate change, environmental, social and governance issues, transnational regulation, and other areas. They have also brought in newer frameworks and methodologies: comparative law, law and economics, empirical legal studies, law and society, feminist outlooks, and experimental jurisprudence, to name a few.
Over the years, our fellows have also published full-length articles in leading peer reviewed journals such as the Cambridge Law Journal, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Law Quarterly Review, Modern Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and the University of Toronto Law Journal.
While the Sheridan Fellowship programme has grown organically in the last decade with the influx of new and talented colleagues, NUS Law is committed to promoting diversity in the background and experiences of our selected applicants, as well as intellectual diversity in terms of research interests. Under Dean Andrew Simester, NUS Law has articulated a policy that clarifies pathways for progression, with the end goal being to prepare Sheridan Fellows for a tenure track position at NUS Law.
To find out more about the Sheridan Fellowship Programme, join our outreach event on Monday, 2 September 2024 at 6.30 p.m., Block B, Seminar Room 4-4.
Sheridan Fellowship applications for Academic Year 2025 will open on 1 September 2024 and close on 31 October 2024. For more information on applications to the programme, visit our NUS Law Careers page. If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact the Director of the Sheridan Fellowship Programme, Associate Professor Tan Zhong Xing (lawtzx@nus.edu.sg).