The University of Wollongong has officially recognised its first cohorts of graduates for 2019.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students from the Law, Humanities and the Arts; Social Sciences; and Science, Medicine and Health faculties celebrated their academic and research achievements.
The last of seven autumn graduation ceremonies was held on Friday.
Dr Kishan Kariipponan was among the student cohort who celebrated the end of his PhD, which focused on the role of social media and mobile phones on a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory.
Dr Kariipponan's life has followed an incredible thread.
A third-generation Tamil Malaysian, Dr Kariipponan was persecuted for his ethnicity and told he would never be able to access a university education. But he was determined to prove his detractors wrong.
He lived in Russia for a decade, where he gained a degree in medicine, before relocating to Australia in 2007 to study public health.
Dr Kariipponan is now a lecturer in UOW's School of Health and Society.
Philip Clarke, the Chair of the board of the Early Start Research Institute, received an Honorary Doctor of Laws in the morning session, while Australian publisher and editor Richard Walsh spoke at the final ceremony.