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Alumni Profiles

Sophie Pilcher, LLM 2011-12

My interest in International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian work started while I was doing my LLM at Warwick, and these areas formed the subject of my dissertation.

From Warwick, I took up an internship for the UN at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a court established to try the most senior and responsible members of the Khmer Rouge for violations of international law and serious crimes, such as the Cambodian Genocide.

The most challenging part of my job at first was getting my head around the amount of documents involved in international criminal cases. These can go on for years, even decades, so the number of witness statements and amount of evidence can be overwhelming.

We have to analyse and create very complex legal arguments, often in a very short period of time. If you’re considering Law at Warwick, I’d say go for it. Having studied at three higher education establishments now, I found Warwick’s teaching staff by far the most helpful and supportive.

Pete Spencer, MA in Film and Television Studies 2009/10

My Warwick degrees have been invaluable to a career in script development. They exposed me to a wide variety of different styles, genres, and periods of narrative storytelling.

They helped identify devices that can have a profound impact on the way a story is told. Moreover, in having been exposed to such a broad range of cinema, I feel better equipped to research and develop new projects and ideas with writers.

I’ve found this to be true when working with individual writers on one specific project at a time, and when working across a broad slate of films and television shows at various stages of development and production at Big Talk Pictures.

Siti Birkha Mohd Ali, MSc in Engineering Business Management, 2002-03

After graduation, I returned to Malaysia to continue my role as an electrical engineer at Thermadyne. It is one of the leading US-based companies in the manufacture of welding equipment and related products. I stayed with the company for more than ten years and was appointed as an engineering manager in 2007. The knowledge I gained at Warwick, plus the beneficial skills and awareness gained through my industrial experiences definitely helped me in this challenging role.

At end of 2011, I decided to pursue a career in academia, so I applied for a post at one of the private local universities. I’m currently Head of Programme for the Electrical Engineering Division. I enjoy both teaching — I teach several electrical engineering courses such as Electrical Technology & Electrical Energy Utilisation — and supervising undergraduate students in their final year project.