Mary Spiers Williams

Mary recently returned to teaching and researching from a law school, and has joined the UTS Faculty of Law where she convenes and teaches advanced courses in criminal law and social justice.

Until February 2025, Mary Spiers Williams was the Associate Dean in Australian Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University, and worked across schools and colleges to develop a contemporary and innovative Australian Indigenous Studies curriculum there. She developed the foundational, continuing and capstone courses in Australian Indigenous Studies, which supported undergraduate students (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) to develop skills in critical thinking and self-reflexive practice that enables insights into First Peoples’ diverse knowledge and perspectives. These courses included the first-year courses: ‘Country, Kinship and Continuities’ and ‘Resilience, Rights and Resurgence’, a theory course in ‘Critical Indigenous Studies’, ‘Indigenous perspectives on ethics, protocols and methods’ that centred learning from Country, and - in collaboration with community members -, she taught immersive in Country field schools in central and north Australia and created opportunities for students to undertake social justice internships.

Prior to being asked to take on the Indigenous Studies Portfolio in the Office of the Dean of the ANU College of Art and Social Sciences, Mary taught in the law schools of the ANU, UNSW, and University of Adelaide and in criminology at Monash University.

Key influences on Mary's teaching include her work with First Peoples in community, her experience as a legal pracitioner and experience in criminology research. In the years before joining academia, she was an advocate for desert peoples as a law and justice projects officer in central Australia. Prior to that she practised primarily criminal law in central Australia and New South Wales (including appearances at all levels of criminal law jurisdiction), and was the senior policy officer for the NSW Attorney General's Criminal Law Review Division. During this time, she taught undergraduate criminal law at the University of Sydney. During her law degree, Mary was a criminology researcher.