Vice-Chancellor and President
Deakin University
Professor Philip H Clarke LLB (W.Aust), LLM (Auck)
Philip Clarke joined Deakin University in February 1989 as an Associate Professor of Commercial Law. In 1992, he was appointed as the University's Foundation Professor of Law and in 1993 as the inaugural Head of its Law School. In that position, he played a leading role in developing Deakin's LLB degree program which was the first in Victoria to be available off campus and the first in Australia to have a deliberate and distinct orientation towards commercial law. Together with Deakin's Institute of Koorie Education, he was also responsible for establishing an elongated law program for indigenous students with the assistance of National Priority Reserve Fund grant. In 1999 Professor Clarke was appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law and in 2008 to his current position as Pro Vice-Chancellor (International). He is a graduate of the universities of Western Australia and Auckland and was the James Nelson International Fellow at Northwestern University in Chicago during 1986-87. He is admitted to practice law in Western Australia, the ACT and Victoria.
Prior to joining Deakin, Professor Clarke was the Director of the Commercial Law Centre at Monash University and a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law. Whilst at Monash he also served as Sub-Dean of Law. Previously, he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the Australian National University where he also served as the Deputy Warden and Acting Warden of Garran Hall. He has also held adjunct appointments at the KDU Management Development Centre in Malaysia and at the University of Western Australia.
Professor Clarke is actively engaged with legal, professional and community organisations. Early in his career he conducted a pilot duty counsel program for the New Era Aboriginal Foundation and he has experience of the law reform process through working as the Director of the Western Australian Law Reform Commission (1980-1982). He has also served as a member of the Trade Practices Commission Consultative Committee (1989-91), as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank to assist the Indonesian Government in relation to competition law and policy reform (1998) and as Chair of the University of Canberra Law School Review Committee (2005). In 2001-2003 he was a Judge of the Australian Law Awards and for several years acted as an advisor to the AFL Players' Association. He has also been a "loaned executive" for United Way and is currently the Principal Examiner in Business Law for the Law Institute of Victoria's Specialisation Board and an auditor for the Australian Universities Quality Agency.
Professor Clarke's principal fields of teaching and research are Contract, Competition Law and Consumer Protection. In these fields he has published several monographs and texts including, most recently, Contract Law, Commentaries, Cases and Perspectives (Oxford 2008, with J Clarke and M Zhou) Competition Law and Policy (2nd edn, Oxford 2005, with Corones) and Consumer Protection and Product Liability, Commentary and Materials (3rd edn, Law Book Co 2008, with Corones). Professor Clarke has also been the editor of the Australian Business Law Review, the Cavendish Press "Principles" series and the "Unfair Dealing" volume of The Laws of Australia. In 2004, Professor Clarke received the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching and was a finalist in the Australian Awards for University Teaching; in 2006 he also received a Carrick Citation for Contributions to Student Learning.
