Katherine Biber is a legal scholar, criminologist and historian and Professor of Law at UTS.

Her latest book is The Last Outlaws (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2025). It examines the crimes of Jimmy and Joe Governor in 1900 and how these shaped modern Australia. The Governor brothers were Wiradjuri and Wonnarua men, rural labourers in the New South Wales colony. Triggered by employer exploitation and racist remarks, they committed nine murders of settlers after which they were proclaimed outlaws. These events coincided with the commencement of Australian federation, and the same people who tried to bring the brothers to justice – lawyers, politicians, police, scientists, missionaries – were at the same time making the institutions of modern Australia.

Katherine undertook the research for The Last Outlaws in cooperation with descendants of Jimmy Governor. Her podcast trilogy, made as part of this collaboration, won multiple awards, including the NSW Premier’s History Award, the Australian Podcast Award (2022 podcast of the year) and the Australian Legal Research Award.

Katherine teaches and researches Evidence. Her scholarly interests lie in photographic evidence, documentary evidence, criminal evidence and histories of evidence.

Her previous book was In Crime’s Archive: The Cultural Afterlife of Evidence (Routledge, 2018). It explored what happens to criminal evidence after the conclusion of legal proceedings, where it is no longer regulated by the court, and reappears in unexpected and sometimes transgressive contexts. It won the Australian Legal Research Award.

Katherine has written and edited books on photographic evidence, surveillance, archives, documents and miscarriages of justice.

She joined the UTS Faculty of Law in 2008. Until recently, she served as co-Editor in Chief of the international journal Crime, Media, Culture. She recently completed a 4-year term on the Australian Research Council College of Experts.