Events

2025 Allen Hope Southey Memorial Lecture

Businesses across the world face growing pressure to address their social and environmental impacts while remaining competitive and profitable. The traditional approach — separating business activities from charitable efforts — no longer works in the modern world of impact investing, where profit and social good go hand in hand. This same divide is reflected in trust law, with separate rules and enforcement between charitable trusts and private trusts.

This lecture will challenge that divide and show there are fundamental similarities between how trusts for individuals and trusts for specific purposes are enforced. By recognising these similarities, we can explore new possibilities, like non-charitable purpose trusts, and rethink how trust law can better support social enterprises. This shift allows us to create governance structures that help businesses stay true to their social missions while also meeting their commercial demands.

About the Lecture Series

In 1958, Ethel Thorpe Southey, better known as Nancy Southey, made a gift to the University of Melbourne to endow a law lectureship in memory of her husband Allen Hope Southey, who had graduated as a Master of Laws in the University in 1917 and died in 1929 at the age of 35. Thirty years later, the Allen Hope Southey Memorial Lecture again enjoyed the support of the Southey family as they made further donations to build on Nancy Southey’s initiative. Forty years later, Mr and Mrs Southey’s son, Sir Robert Southey, made a generous gift in his will to the lectureship fund his mother had established. And in 2008, 50 years later, the five sons of Sir Robert Southey continued the family’s support of the Allen Hope Southey Memorial Lecture at Melbourne Law School.

Just weeks into his second term, President Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and signed a series of executive orders that dramatically alter the U.S. course on climate and energy policy. What does this shift mean for global climate efforts and the energy transition?

In this seminar, Professor Guri Bang from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) will provide insights into these developments, drawing on her expertise in environmental governance, U.S. climate policy, and international energy transitions.