Research clusters

Areas of focus and collaboration

UTS Law Research Clusters are groupings of researchers who are actively engaged in a particular theme of legal research. These groups are not only made up of UTS Law academics, but also external academics, postdoctoral research fellows and higher degree research students.

Research Clusters hold events and activities in order to promote their research and engage with the community outside their group. Whilst these groups do not encompass the entirety of research areas being undertaken in UTS Law, they highlight areas of focus and collaboration within our Faculty.

Research clusters

The Criminal Justice research cluster at UTS displays a vibrancy and diversity of research interests and a depth in research experience.

Our research

Research projects include topics on family violence, the approaches of the law to offensive language, issues of criminal culpability, discussions on victimisation, mental health and healthcare within the criminal justice system, criminal procedure and evidence, and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples.

Our impact

We provide a critical and theoretical analysis of criminal justice responses and state interventions. Scholars have also advanced ways of undertaking crime research by developing methodologies of court observations, court archival analyses, case and police file examinations, interviews with judicial officers, prisoners and legal participants, Indigenous community fieldwork, and cultural representations in media and film.

UTS researchers collaborate with scholars across universities on a national and international level, and with external stakeholders, including departments of justice, local governments, victims groups, law reform commissions, Aboriginal legal services and judicial organisations, and Aboriginal women's groups and health and well being services.

The group makes a strong contribution to media and law reform debates in parliament in relation to criminal law, and have been successful in obtaining competitive grants to further their research. In recent years, researchers have produced leading books on crime and acquired nationally competitive research funding for projects on criminal law, procedure and criminology.

Convenor
- Ken Wu
- Thalia Anthony
Members
External Member
- Chris Cunneen
The Feminist Legal Research group brings together wide ranging scholarship on many areas of law examined through a feminist lens.

The UTS Faculty of Law has a particular strength in this area with many leading and emerging feminist legal scholars who engage in both critique of the law and attempts to transform it.

Research interests span criminal law and evidence, international law and human rights, refugee and migration law, constitutional law, family law, legal issues associated with health and the body, Indigenous legal issues, law, history and colonialism, as well as law and humanities.

Members are committed to sharing their work, collaborating with each other and working across disciplines. The group of approximately 30 people includes members from other universities in Sydney and holds regular seminars.

Convenors
Members
The Indigenous legal relations group investigates the intersections between Indigenous and Australian laws and how state laws impact on the lives of Indigenous peoples.

Current research includes Indigenous law and legal praxis, the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice and child protection systems, information technology and intellectual property, nation building, treaties, human rights, and constitutional reform and Indigenous Australians.

We work closely with the Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research to ensure that our work supports Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination and responds to the needs of Indigenous communities.

Convenor
- Mary Spiers Williams
Members
External members
- Alison Whittaker
- Beck Lewis
- Gemma Sentance
- Kirsten Gray
Graduate Research Students
- Haylee Davis
- Jonathon Captain-Webb
- Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts
Producing outstanding, globally-recognised scholarship at the forefront of international law and policy.

The International Law Cluster at UTS works collegially and across-disciplines to produce innovative, evidenced-based scholarship to contribute to change on a global scale.

Our strengths

The work of Cluster members cuts across diverse fields, with particular strengths in:
- Cultural heritage and protection of traditional knowledge
- Human rights and government accountability
- Feminist perspectives on international law
- Indigenous peoples and international law
- Statelessness, refugees and the movement of people across borders
- International environmental, climate and energy law
- Law of the sea
- International intellectual property
- International trade and investment law and private international law
- Data, technology and international law
Our impact

Our research is characterised by engagement with new perspectives and approaches to international law, challenging inequalities and power dynamics and pre-empting and offering solutions to future global challenges.

By working with international and domestic organisations including UNESCO, OECD, UN Women and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, we seek to uncover the gap between rights on paper and practical reality and to make a genuine imprint on global policy change.

Convenors
Members
UTS Law has Australia’s largest, most distinctive and most successful concentration of legal historians and scholars working at the nexus of law, history and culture. This strength is internationally recognised and its success demonstrated by the number and quality of the Group’s publications, events, invitations and visitors.

The Law and History area of excellence group examines the ways in which cultural and historical perspectives give insight into legal issues. Drawing on methodologies from history, historiography, cultural studies, critical theory, literature and archival theory and practice, scholars in the group examine historical and cultural issues arising from legal doctrines, norms, practices, processes and ways of thinking. Scholars are examining the relationship between law and Indigenous culture, histories of legal doctrines, cultural uses of legal materials, literary interpretations of law, and the entanglement of law and popular culture. Interdisciplinary work of this nature exposes the values embedded in law’s institutions, allowing scholars to assess their capacity for justice, re-configuration and reform.

The Law and History scholars are also members of the wider, cross-discipline, history group UTS HistoryLab. UTS HistoryLab is composed of scholars from Law, the Faculty of Arts and Social Science and the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. For all our events, see our UTS HistoryLab events diary.

CONVENOR
Alecia Simmonds

MEMBERS
Brett Heino
Diane Kirkby
Douglas McDonald-Norman
Eugene Schofield-Georgeson
Frances Flanagan
Isabella Alexander
Jessie Hohmann
Katherine Biber
Nicole Watson
Thalia Anthony
Trish Luker
Shaunnagh Dorsett
We are a faculty research centre in the Faculty of Law, committed to advancing interdisciplinary research and policy at the intersections of law, health, and justice. Our work contributes to legal and policy frameworks that promote health equity, protect human rights, and ensure justice in healthcare settings.

We bring together scholars, practitioners, and community advocates across a variety of projects, to develop transformative legal research for our communities. Our work spans a wide array of topics, including bioethics, mental health law, reproductive rights, disability and elder law, and the ethical and legal dimensions of emerging health technologies. Through collaborative research, public engagement, and partnerships across disciplines, we aim to make a meaningful impact on the lives of individuals and communities – especially our most vulnerable.

We invite you to explore our research themes, publications, and upcoming events. Please reach out to us for further information and opportunities to collaborate.

Find out more

Convenors:
Aileen Kennedy
Our Impact

Across both fields of migration and labour law, cluster members have made evidence-based law reform proposals and undertaken engagement activities through the media, with policy-makers, decision-makers and the legal profession to promote fair laws for migrants and greater accountability in workplace relations in Australia and elsewhere. UTS Law researchers are involved in numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with leading scholars based in other faculties and universities in Australia and overseas. Members of the Migration and Labour Law Cluster have obtained many government, NGO and industry grants to further impactful research. They also undertake innovative engaged collaborations with legal organizations and teaching teams to ensure our research expertise makes valuable impacts on legal practice and professional development.

The Migration and Labour Law Cluster runs seminars and activities relevant to cluster themes.

Members of this cluster work collegially to produce outstanding, evidence-based and critical research at the forefront of migration and labour law. The cluster brings together researchers working at the intersection of diverse fields of law with shared concerns around the production and regulation of migrant and worker legal status, rights and conditions in Australia and elsewhere.

Cluster Strengths

This research cluster has particular strengths in:
- The impact of technology including Artificial Intelligence on migrant worker and other worker rights, and migration processes
- Regulating to address workplace exploitation notably of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, including the eradication of trafficking and modern slavery
- Critical approaches to law and policy affecting refugees and other forced migrants, and examinations of minoritized groups in migration processes.
- The gendered impact of law on migrants and workers and the potential for improved gender-responsiveness of labour legislation with the goal of workplace equality
- The history and theory of international migration law and Australian refugee law and practice
- The regulation of immigration detention, and the intersections of criminal and migration law
- The regulation and training of the migration advice profession
- Domestic refugee sponsorship and employment schemes
- The history and practice of the International Labour Organisation and UN High Commissioner for Refugees in regulating labour conditions and mobility
- Regulating digital labour platforms, supply chains and other multilateral business arrangements to protect and empower vulnerable workers
- The history and theory of labour law and its impact on worker experience and organisation
- Legal reproduction of class relations
- Industrial Democracy
- Environmental bargaining between workers and employers
- Enforcement and co-enforcement of labour law
We welcome collaboration opportunities, higher degree research supervision requests and media enquiries.

Convenors

Eugene Schofield-Georgeson

Frances Flanagan

Members

Anthea Vogl
Brett Heino
Brian Opeskin
Christine Giles
Diane Kirkby
Frances Simmons
Jennifer Burn
Joellen Riley Munton
Laurie Berg

Michael Rawling
Ramona Vijeyarasa
Sara Dehm

Tim Paine
This research cluster is a forum for creative engagement and inspiration among colleagues working in the private law space.

Private law, broadly speaking, deals with relations between individuals, and between individuals and their institutions. Our members ask questions about how the private law archive, in areas such as contract, tort, property, equity, corporations and employment, intersects with society.

The term ‘beyond’ indicates that our research is not confined to ‘black letter law’ issues; indeed, legal issues – both in theory and practice – are inseparable from culture, emotion, politics, ethics, and social justice. In many cases, they will also involve work that transcends disciplinary boundaries.

Research currently undertaken by our members includes:
- National and international corporate law, regulation and policy issues, including corporate culture, governance and insolvency;
- Contract law, both in its relationship to human emotions, and in emerging employment relations such as the ‘gig’ or ‘on-demand’ economy;
- Discrimination and social exclusion within the workplace or private institutions, including employee and disability discrimination, and legal avenues to uphold equity;
- Indigenous rights and engagement in corporate and private law contexts;
- Cross-cultural impacts on private legal relations, especially within cross-border commercial and corporate transactions in the Asian region;
- Property rights and protection of vulnerable groups such as the elderly and disabled;
- Torts, toxic torts, and access to civil justice for victims of injuries; and
- Privacy law, including internet and social media privacy; and the intersection between private law and government accountability.
Our researchers participate in policy reforms and expert forums, including contributions to government inquiries.

We have an active research and public seminar program by members and visiting speakers.

Convenors
- Colin Hawes
- Renata Grossi
Members
External Members
- Guangyu Ding
- Nan Luo
New and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and social media platforms, have profound implications for society, creating opportunities and risks, while posing considerable legal challenges. They are the product of the information age and together with intellectual property rights are central to globalization and international trade.

The Technology and Intellectual Property Research Cluster brings together leading UTS Law academics working across the areas of technology law and regulation, and intellectual property law, with the aim of producing high quality scholarship that advances our understanding of complex legal and social issues arising from the creative industries and the use of technologies.

Research undertaken by members includes:
- national and international research projects concerning copyright and new technologies
- the protection of Indigenous knowledge
- commercialisation of intellectual property
- regulation of data
- human rights and intellectual property
- history of intellectual property
- regulation of communications platforms
- regulation of artificial intelligence.
There is close collaboration between the Technology and Intellectual Property research cluster and other UTS research groups, and its members include academic leaders from the Centre for Media Transition and Austlii.

Researchers actively participate in legal and policy debates, including contributing to government inquiries into copyright law reform, the regulation of digital platforms, patent law reform, human rights and technology, and privacy law reform.

The Technology and Intellectual Property research cluster has a very active research and public seminar program attracting international experts; and hosts significant national and international seminars, consultations and events.

Convenors
Isabella Alexander
Natalie Stoianoff

Members
Andrew Mowbray
Derek Wilding
Evana Wright
Genevieve Wilkinson
George Tian
Grace Li
Jane Rawlings
Jill McKeough
Karen Lee
Lesley Hitchens
Sacha Molitorisz

External members
Philip Chung

LHJ people

Law | Health | Justice

We are a faculty research centre in the Faculty of Law, committed to advancing interdisciplinary research and policy at the intersections of law, health, and justice. Our work contributes to legal and policy frameworks that promote health equity, protect human rights, and ensure justice in healthcare settings.