Current PhD students
Lachlan Hoy
Lachlan’s PhD addresses the ways in which law is already implicated in the existential dimensions of the climate crisis. Through ontological critique and jurisprudential deconstruction, his thesis asks how socio-legal norms have enabled our inertia, and seeks to re-imagine the law within a planetary, posthuman frame.
John Siong
John’s PhD focuses on the adoption and regulation of automated land vehicles in Australia and China. Through a comparative law approach it focuses on the role of consumer law in both jurisdictions to deal with issues of assurance of safety, injury compensation and privacy.
Morgan Broman
Morgan is an experienced researcher with Masters degrees in law and computer science from Lund University, Sweden. Morgan’s PhD examines how the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) can be programmed into lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS)
Nicholas Godfrey
Nicholas’ PhD project is in computation law and using notions of translation as happens in bilingual juridical systems to the challenge of coding law.
Rene Cornish
René’s PhD examines the ways in which social media is transforming broader society and employment relations in South Africa. Using systematic content analysis techniques, the thesis is positioned at the intersection between social media proliferation and contested first-instance dismissals for social media misconduct as a developing global phenomenon.
Nicholas Korpela
Nicholas’ thesis concerns how artificial intelligence technology itself could be used as an instrument of power, as well as having the potential for profound social, political, and economic change. In this regard, the research will critically examine AI through the perspectives of ideological analysis. It will also consider whether AI deployment can be explained beyond these ideological frameworks, and if this is the case, if there are alternative ways of thinking about power structures which could improve upon legal responses to emerging technology.
Stephen O’Mahony
Stephen’s PhD considers how understanding pilot decision making through behaviour economic models should underpin the regulatory and enforcement strategies of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Australia.
Marcelo Feitosa de Paula Dias
Marcelo F. Dias’ PhD investigates the role of tracing technology and how the acceptable use of data it collects may enhance the international environmental law framework concerning the global stewardship of trees and plants. Adopting a doctrinal description, the dissertation aims to dig deep into the intersection of international law, science & technology and propose innovative solutions on how tracing tools can address global environmental harm issues.
Amanda Bull
Amanda’s PhD research focus is on the 2021 amendments to the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) that were intended to provide financially troubled Small to Medium Enterprises with a more cost effective, efficient and less complex legislative regime to restructure or liquidate. My research considers whether technology, (i.e., anything from simple digital automation to sophisticated artificial intelligence), could better assist the regime to achieve its stated objectives.
Emily Muir
Emily’s thesis concerns how images of children are prefigured, embodied and critiqued in Japanese Popular Culture. Children live within the complexities of the adult world and childhood can be seen as a time of discord and vulnerability. She explores how Japanese anime as a valuable source for critics of legality, forms of justice and juridical life through cultural legal inquiry.
Diogenes Eli Casas Samper
Diogenes’s PhD project explores Blockchain-based technologies implementation in the Global South to prevent corruption within the climate change framework of the carbon market. This project uses Colombia as a case study.
Kristy Paynter
Kristy’s PhD examines drone regulation for commercial end-consumer delivery in Australia. Her project focus on the legal and economic dimensions in the automation of supply-chain and delivery systems.
Malgorzata Fituch
Malgorzata’s PhD is concerned with blockchain and public sector values such as transparency and accountability. Her project aims to identify how blockchain and related technologies can contribute to more open and accountable governance structures.
Sasha Purcell
Sasha’s PhD engages with queer legal theory and its animation and problematisation in post-2017 DC comics. Her project is at the intersections of visual jurisprudence, cultural legal studies and comic studies.
Sam Harvey
Sam’s PhD asks whether the common law in Australia is a living jurisdiction through an examination of High Court of Australia judgements from 2000 to 2020. Sam’s research identifies a marginal common law, active within highly specific topic areas just as torts, native title and judicial review, but hemmed in and limited by legislative interventions and declinations.
Jane Dillon
Jane’s PhD is concerns how to value community legal centres in Australia. Drawing upon international studies and literature on how to value community-based, hybrid services that have paid and volunteer staff, she aims to develop a more rigorous and reliable evaluative process for community legal centres in Australia.
Kerry Walker
How judges understand and engage with therapeutic and alternative justice pathways is important for effective use of these pathways and avoiding the cycle of criminalization. Kerry research uses sociolegal research methods to understand how judges whose courts are co-located with alternative justice pathways talk about and work with these alternatives.
Completed PhD students
Kristina Chelberg
Kristina’s PhD was how public discourses frame understandings of social problems, particularly in the field of health law. It and investigates narratives of dementia in Australia, representation in the public discourse of key stakeholders and institutions, and how these may present in the legislative and regulatory framework of the aged care system. Kristina’s HTLC supervisor was Kieran Tranter. She completed in 2024.
Ilana Bolingford
In her PhD Ilana used constructivist methods to co-produce with law academics their experiences of research impact and engagement. She examined in how extrinsic elements such as policy and technology inform the experiences of law academics of their understandings and decisions about research impact and engagement. Ilana’s HTLC supervisor was Kieran Tranter. She completed in 2024.
Heloisa Valadares
Heloisa’s PhD thesis focused on a comparative analysis between how Brazilian and Australian data protection public policies have been structured for the last years, through the investigation of the role played by the will in the context of Informational Society, developing a list of elements devoted in effectively protecting the personality rights and to put light on elements for continuous improvement. Heloisa’s HTLC supervisor was Kieran Tranter. She completed in 2024.
Vincent Goding
Vincent Goding completed his PhD with the School of Law and Society, University of the Sunshine Coast. His thesis ‘Exceptionality, Neoliberalism and Corporations in COVID Times’ examined the Australian Government’s economic responses to the pandemic and related legal frameworks. Vincent used legal theory to critically analyse those responses and to ask what they reveal about neoliberalism, its accounts of the corporation, and the role of law and power in our neoliberal order in exceptional circumstances. Vince’s HTLC supervisor was Kieran Tranter. He completed in 2024.
Rachel Horne
Rachel’s PhD examines the existing Australian regulatory frameworks for the accreditation and assurance of autonomy for commercial automated maritime vessels. Rachel’s HTLC supervisors were Felicity Dean and Kieran Tranter. She completed in 2024.
Syed Shahzad
The critical space infrastructure (CSI) is a complex system-of-systems that provides vital services to society, and its unavailability has a significant impact on economics, safety and security. Although CSI is faced with specific environmental risks such as space weather and debris, it has a significant human-made threat called anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, of which one is a cyberattack. In his PhD research, Syed developed a comprehensive cyber resiliency engineering framework to provide robust design and sustainable cyber security guidelines at the planning and design stages. This framework presents contemporary concepts such as service adaptability and degraded service operations for CSI, which may come under cyberattack. Syed’s HTLC supervisor was Felicity Dean. He completed in 2023.
Lachlan Robb
Lachlan undertook an ethnographic study of the blockchain start-up Beefledger to understand how law and representations create meaning and communities focused on digital innovation. Lachlan’s HTLC supervisors were Michael Guihot, John Flood and Kieran Tranter. He completed in 2023.