Dr Amy Maguire

Dr Amy Maguire is a Senior Lecturer and the Indigenous Student Liaison in Newcastle Law School. She is an active commentator on international legal and human rights issues. In 2016, Amy was awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Early Career Researcher of the Year at the University of Newcastle. She was also selected as a finalist for the Academic of the Year Award in the Lawyers' Weekly Women in Law Awards.

Dr Maguire's fields of research are public international law and human rights, with particular focus on self-determination, Indigenous rights, climate change, refugees and asylum seekers, and the death penalty. Amy has ongoing research collaborations with UoN and external partners in relation to climate change, human rights and human displacement, the legal regulation of climate change mitigation strategies, the Indigenisation of curriculum, and blended/active teaching and learning. She has published widely in highly-regarded journals and edited books.

Amy has also emerged as a national and international commentator in her fields of research, with a number of online publications, media engagements, invited talks and submissions to government inquiries. In 2015, she was invited to appear before and assist the federal parliamentary inquiry into 'Australia's advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty'. In 2016, Amy took up the position as co-chair of the Indigenous Rights sub-committee of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. In that role, she collaborates with other human rights lawyers and law students to promote the recognition and achievement of substantively equal rights for Indigenous peoples in Australia.

Amy has pioneered innovative approaches to teaching that have enhanced her students' experience of learning in international law and other fields. She was most recently recognised with the 2015 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Business and Law. Amy's commitment to Indigenisation is expressed through her teaching in the course Indigenous Peoples, Issues and the Law. She has also shown leadership in program and course design, as part of her broader commitment to collegial service to the University.  

Research expertise

Dr Maguire's PhD was awarded in December 2011. Her doctoral research explored the collective human right to self-determination, with particular focus on Indigenous peoples in Australia and Irish nationalists in the North of Ireland. Amy argued in her thesis that self-determination retains a mission of decolonisation in the twenty-first century, and sought to address the contemporary colonial experience of peoples in settler colonial societies. Amy continues to expand on her doctoral work by proposing novel circumstances in which the right of self-determination might empower vulnerable communities of people.

Dr Maguire's current research extends to a range of fields in public international and human rights law, with a unifying concern for holding governments accountable to human rights obligations. Her online research engagements, most notably through publication in The Conversation, have extended Amy's research to a range of fields in which she aims to contribute to policy development and just outcomes for individuals and communities.

https://theconversation.com/profiles/amy-maguire-129609/articles

Amy has two young children and works part-time.