Our partners
Professor Jack Anderson
Professor Jack Anderson is affiliated with Melbourne University, he has published widely in the area of sports law including The Legality of Boxing (Routledge, London, 2007), Modern Sports Law (Hart, Oxford 2010), the edited collection Landmark Cases in Sports Law (The Hague, Asser, 2013) and he is a contributor to the latest edition of Thorpe et al on Sports Law in Australia (2022). Jack is a member of a number of sports dispute resolution tribunals.
Associate Professor Natalie Baird
Natalie Baird is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law | Te Kaupeka Ture at the University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha in Aotearoa | New Zealand. Natalie’s research interests include international human rights law, international refugee law, international disaster law and Pacific legal studies. Natalie is also a part-time member of the New Zealand Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Dr Hayley Cullen
Lecturer in Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University. Hayley is passionate about conducting innovative psycho-legal research that has the potential to improve legal procedures and prevent miscarriages of justice from occurring. She is also passionate about conducting research that can improve victims' access to justice.
Pro Bono Solicitor Kishaya Delaney
Kishaya Delaney is a proud Wiradjuri woman, graduate of Newcastle Law School, and Pro Bono Solicitor at Herbert Smith Freehills. Previously, Kishaya worked as Project Officer for the Towards Truth project, leading a team of researchers to develop a legislation and policy mapping database to support truth-telling under the third reform of the Uluru Statement of the Heart. As a key member of the Uluru Statement Youth Dialogue, Kishaya regularly delivers presentations and facilitates sessions about the Uluru Statement from the Heart movement.
Solicitor Lauren Davies
Lauren Davies is a Gomeroi-Ngarabal woman. In 2020, she graduated from Macquarie University and started working as a solicitor with the National Justice Project (NJP) specialising in facilitating access to justice, dismantling racially biased health and justice systems and providing client-centred services. Lauren has experience working as criminal a solicitor with the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) and as a civil solicitor with Legal Aid NSW. She is currently working for the Department of Parliamentary Services. She is also undertaking a Master of Laws specialising in Human Rights Law and Policy at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
Senior Associate Luke Hawthorne
Luke specialises in intellectual property, privacy, and regulatory litigation at the law firm King & Wood Mallesons, where he acts across technology, creative, and life sciences industries. Beginning with campaigns as a member of the University of Newcastle Law Students Association, Luke has continued a commitment to use his skills as a lawyer as an advocate for change in the recognition of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights—leading a program delivering over 3,000 pro bono hours to over 300 artists. In 2020, he was the recipient of the University of Newcastle Young Alumni Award.
Professor Bronwyn Hemsley
Professor Bronwyn Hemsley is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist and Fellow of Speech Pathology Australia and the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She co-leads the Disability Research Network at UTS. Bronwyn has been involved in collaborative research with Dr Shaun McCarthy particularly in relation to the use of personal e-health records, the Advance Care Directive, Australia's My Health Record, and the safety of people with disability in hospital and at home, most recently in relation to preventing the choking deaths of people with swallowing difficulty in residential services. She has substantial experience in conducting inclusive research that includes people with severe communication disability.
Associate Professor Mary Anne Kenny
Associate Professor Mary Anne Kenny is affiliated with Murdoch University, she is published in the area of human rights of refugees and asylum seekers. Her research on improving legal practice, community support and high-level policy advice through the study of migration and refugee law and policy was rated by the ARC as having high socioeconomic impact.
Dr Fiona McGaughey
Dr Fiona McGaughey is an Associate Professor at UWA Law school at the University of Western Australia. She teaches on the Master of International Law, and the Law and Society Major. Fiona’s primary research areas are international human rights law (including UN mechanisms and the role of NGOs), modern slavery and human rights pedagogy.
Associate Professor Jeffrey McGee
Associate Professor Jeffrey McGee is affiliated with the University of Tasmania. He is an expert in global environmental law and governance and works on strategies that can help us respond to climate change. He provides critical analysis and commentary on the development and policy of institutions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), and the legal frameworks that bind them.
Associate Professor Maria O'Sullivan
Associate Professor Maria O'Sullivan is affiliated with Monash University, and is the Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Maria is the author of a number of international and national publications on the subjects of public law, human rights and refugee law.
Managing Solicitor Emma Parker
Emma Parker (LLB (Hons) BA-Psych) is the Managing Solicitor of the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) office in Newcastle. Emma was trained by two Accredited Criminal Law Specialists in a private Sydney law firm and then joined the ALS at Redfern in 2018. She is a persuasive and experienced courtroom advocate that practises exclusively in Criminal Defence Law.
Solicitor Charlotte Pascall
In late 2016, Charlotte started as a volunteer with the ALS Newcastle office whilst completing her studies at UoN. At the beginning of 2019 she started as a junior solicitor with the Western Zone ALS in Tamworth, before moving to the Bathurst office in 2020. She appeared in the Children’s, Local and District courts in a range of rural and remote locations across Western NSW. In October 2021, she returned home to Newcastle and joined the Local Court team at Legal Aid. She is the managing solicitor of the District Court appeals practice.
Dr Sangeetha Pillai
Dr Sangeetha Pillai is a constitutional lawyer and a Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She is an expert on Australian citizenship law, and the constitutional differences in the scope of government power that can be exercised over citizens and non-citizens.
Caitlin Reiger
Caitlin Reiger is CEO of the Human Rights Law Centre and a human rights lawyer. She has spent the past 25 years working globally on transitional justice for mass human rights violations, international criminal law, and justice system reform.
Professor Susan Harris Rimmer
Professor Susan Harris Rimmer affiliated with Griffith University, she is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub (appointed July 2020). She is an expert in human rights law, International law, access to justice and feminist theory.
Senior Associate Chris Turner
Chris Turner is a Senior Associate at Chalk and Behrendt. He practices primarily as a litigator conducting Aboriginal land claim appeals in the Land and Environment Court as well as native title claims in the Federal Court of Australia. Chris has also acted for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients and corporations in the Local Court, Supreme Court and the Full Federal Court, as well as before the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Before joining Chalk & Behrendt, Chris gained experience in the Indigenous education sector, working as Research Assistant to the CEO of the Aurora Project/Aurora Education Foundation, and completing an Aurora Internship at the Roberta Sykes Indigenous Education Foundation.
Associate Professor Tamara Blakemore
Dr Tamara Blakemore is a social work practitioner, researcher, and educator recognised as a leader in the field of trauma and trauma informed practice. Her work has shaped policy and practice in response to victims and perpetrators of violence, abuse, and trauma in regional, state, and federal contexts. Tamara heads the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) program which delivers direct service, professional training, resource design and research for youth violence. This innovative program has attracted more than $2m funding from state, federal and corporate sponsors. The program is endorsed and supported by First Nations Elders and community groups and key industry collaborators across sectors of justice, education, health, child protection, youth, and community services. Tamara remains actively involved in clinical practice in acute trauma settings and in volunteer roles with local community agencies supporting vulnerable citizens.
Professor Avi Brisman
Avi Brisman is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, an Honorary Professor at Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle (Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia), and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia); he is also Associate Editor of Crime Media Culture, Book Review Editor of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, and Immediate Past Editor-in-Chief of Critical Criminology: An International Journal. His most recent book is Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People's Perceptions of Crime and Justice: Scaffolding as Structure (Routledge, 2022).
Mrs Loren Collyer
Loren Collyer is a proud Bandjin woman and academic with the Indigenous Education and Research
Academic Division. Loren is the Indigenous Executive Support Officer for the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Leadership at the University of Newcastle.
Mr Damien Linnane
Damien Linnane is a published novelist, internationally exhibited artist, and editor of the prison art and writing magazine Paper Chained. He is completing a PhD through Newcastle Law School, focusing on improving the rights of people with disabilities when impacted by the criminal justice system. His research is inspired by his lived experience of being a prisoner in New South Wales.
Dr Caitlin Mollica
Dr Caitlin Mollica is a Lecturer in Politics at the Newcastle Business School. Caitlin's research is interested in youth agency and participation, transitional justice, gender, access to justice and human rights. Her work applies a human rights approach to post-conflict policy to reveal the factors that enable and the barriers that constrain inclusive governance.
Dr Faye Nitschke
Dr Faye Nitschke is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences. She is interested in investigating ways to improve interpersonal and structural responses to anti-social behaviour, particularly gendered violence, using psychology and law. Her recent research has focused on investigating criminal justice system responses to complainants of sexual violence and community responses to perpetrators of sexual harassment
Honorary Associate Professor Nicola Ross
Nicola Ross is an Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Law and Justice. She is interested in how children, parents and families are included in decisions made about their lives, in child protection, family and criminal processes - and the implications for their wellbeing.
Dr Samuel Blanch
March 2022 - December 2022
Sam is a post-doctoral fellow and socio-legal scholar at the Centre for Law and Social Justice. Sam’s work explores how living religious traditions continue to challenge secular assumptions about governance, ethics, personhood, knowledge, and the nature of the world around us. His work has focused on the transnational Shia Muslim community, and has been grounded in ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Australia, the United Kingdom and Iran. He has used ethnography in conjunction with other critical theoretical and theological resources to explore the integrity and logics of education, finance and art in Muslim communities. At Newcastle he is working on projects that try to understand the encounter between very different legal traditions. Sam’s work shows that a more just understanding of multiculturalism in Australia requires a deeper appreciation of the way religious traditions organise themselves, including through their own legal logics and processes.
Dr Ana Goncalves
March 2022 - October 2022
Ana holds a PhD in Law and is an awarded researcher. She is originally from Brazil but has lived in Australia for many years. Ana has experience teaching at graduate and post-graduate levels and giving public presentations in Australia and internationally, including during international programs in Japan and Brazil. She speaks Portuguese and English and has experience with Spanish and Italian, and she is currently learning German. Ana is passionate about social justice, especially protecting and improving the rights of marginalised communities, using evidence-based research and strong advocacy skills to bring about legal and policy change. Recently, she participated in a research project about good practices for people with disability from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) backgrounds. As a professional and a CaLD woman, Ana is culturally aware and sensitive about the unique challenges faced by people from CaLD backgrounds in Australia. Ana is interested in the intersections of the experiences of people from CaLD backgrounds, including those of disability, gender, disaster, climate change and access to support services. At the Centre for Law and Social Justice, Ana’s research addresses climate change, disability and the Australian refugee policy. Her main research project is in partnership with the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA).
Dr Aloka Wanigasuriya
March 2022 - December 2022
Aloka Wanigasuriya recently obtained their PhD from the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Aloka’s PhD project investigated the impact of the International Criminal Court in Ukraine and Georgia. Aloka is an Australian qualified lawyer who has previously worked at Lund University (Faculty of Law), the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Trial Chamber II, Prosecutor v. Taylor). Aloka has been a visiting researcher at the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University (Australia), Lund University (Sweden), and at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law.
Aloka’s current research focuses on accountability avenues relating to the Russia-Ukraine war. Their research interests lie within the fields of international criminal law, international humanitarian law, public international law and international human rights law.
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The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.