Gender, Technology and the Law: Doctoral Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become embedded in everyday decision-making—shaping access to jobs, credit, healthcare, information and even personal autonomy—yet its development and deployment are far from neutral. Gendered impacts surface througn a range of interconnected harms, including biased recruitment systems; stereotyping in feminised and racialized design of voice interfaces; and evident gender-based gaps in AI literacy and the “missing women” across design, deployment, and leadership in the tech sector. Harms are intensified by intersectional factors—race, age, class, language, and migration status—creating feedback loops that amplify pre-existing inequalities. From non-consensual synthetic image abuse to its use in recruitment, from datafication of sexual and reproductive health decisions to its application in a welfare setting, AI can both mirror and magnify old misogyny.

As regulators attempt to respond to AI’s rapid evolution, there is an urgent need to embed gender justice and intersectional equality into governance frameworks from the outset. This doctoral scholarship offers a unique opportunity to shape that conversation. Rather than simply mitigating risks, regulation can be a proactive tool for promoting fairness and equality across intersecting identities. With AI governance still in its formative stages, regulatory approaches can be designed to not only prevent harm but also harness AI’s potential to advance women’s rights and empowerment. The UTS Chair in Gender and the Law invites scholars to present a proposal for a 3-year doctoral research project that explores innovative approaches to regulating AI through an intersectional feminist lens, addressing algorithmic bias, combating compounded discrimination and ensuring that governance.

Applicants must:

• have completed a Master by Research Degree or a Bachelor Degree with first class honours, or be regarded by the University as having an equivalent level of attainment:

  If an applicant does not meet the eligibility requirements set out above, the University may make a determination that the applicant has demonstrated an equivalent level of attainment. In determining an equivalent level of academic attainment, the University may consider previous study, relevant work experience, research publications, referees' reports and other research experience

• be accepted into a UTS PhD degree in the Faculty of Law
• have been accepted to undertake a Doctor of Philosophy degree by the Law Faculty prior to being ranked for the Scholarship and commence the degree program in the year in which the Scholarship commences
• An applicant must be enrolled as a full-time student upon commencement of the Scholarship, or as a part-time student in the circumstance that the student has reasons acceptable to the University that preclude a full-time study for part or all of the course of study.

• Academic merit of the applicant;
• Research and other relevant experience of the applicant;
• Publication record of the applicant;
• Quality of the research proposal; and
• Relevance of the research proposal to the field of gender, law and technology.

Applicants must follow the application process for entry to the UTS Faculty of Law PhD Program:

Step one: Submit a Pre-Assessment Application to the Faculty of Law, then, if approved

Step two: Submit a Central Application to the UTS Graduate Research School by the relevant scholarship deadline and note on the form that they wish to apply for the UTS Gender, Technology and the Law Doctoral Scholarship.

Pre-Assessment of your application can only occur once you have provided the Faculty of Law (law.research@uts.edu.au) with the following documents:

• Academic Transcripts;
• CV using the UTS CV template (DOCX, 54.4KB);
• A short outline (500 words) of your proposed topic;
• A cover letter;
• A one-page statement which outlines your experience, training and expertise that will enable you to undertake this research project; andcontact details for two referees.

Students currently completing Honours or Masters degrees should list academic results to date, and likely date for completion (which must be before the PhD degree application dates mentioned above).

Guidance regarding proposed topic

The doctoral candidate's proposed project should come within the broad ambit of gender, law and technology. Some potential areas of research that candidates may consider include:

• A comparative multi-country study (e.g.in Latin America, or Southeast Asia) on tech-facilitated violence, including how other jurisdictions are responding in law to the rise in online harassment, non-consensual image sharing, cyberstalking and doxxing.
• A study of AI, gender and how it could be regulated to shape the experiences of women political candidates.
• Investigating how existing anti-discrimination laws in Australia (employment, credit, healthcare) address algorithmic bias and allocative harms, and whether they are fit for purpose.
• Studying current legal responses to representational harms (e.g., feminized voice assistants, non-consensual deepfakes) and assess whether existing laws e.g.on image-based abuse or intellectual property, adequately protect women.
• Investigating the adequacy of support services, including legal services, for survivors of tech-facilitated gender-based violence.T he above list provides only suggested areas of research. Applications should feel free to design a research project that aligns with their interests and expertise so long as it sits within the field of gender, law and technology.

Faculty of Law: Professor Ramona Vijeyarasa