Law Health Justice

Dr Kristina Chelberg is an early career researcher with an emerging profile in socio-legal dementia research. Dr Chelberg joins the UTS Faculty of Law as a 2025 Dementia Australia Research Foundation (DARF) Post-doctoral Fellow. Dr Chelberg's PhD thesis by publication used inter-disciplinary qualitative approaches to examine how framings of dementia contribute to marginalisation of people living with dementia in legal responses to dementia aged care. 

Dr Chelberg holds Degrees in law and science and a Masters in writing, editing and publishing, and is also a registered legal practitioner. Dr Chelberg commenced higher degree research studies in this field following her father’s diagnosis with dementia, catalysed by experiences of his marginalised status in the Australian aged care system. The under examination of legal and justice approaches to improve the lives of people living with dementia served as motivation to pursue socio-legal research into framings of dementia in public and legal aged care discourse.

Dr Chelberg's research adopts interdisciplinary socio-legal approaches, including narrative and discourse analysis, and action research, to build on critical gerontology and dementia studies. Dr Chelberg's three-year DARF post-doc project ‘Promoting voice of people living with dementia in aged care improvement and reform: developing innovative approaches through participatory action research’ focuses on improving participation of people living with dementia in aged care feedback, consultation and improvement processes by exploring the use of innovative approaches using participatory action research. 

Sara Dehm teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, legal history, international migration and refugee law, and the law of international organisations. Her research addresses questions of international authority, border control, knowledge production and migrant resistance in the context of European empires, settler colonialism and struggles for decolonisation. Her first book, Administering Migration: International Law and the Global Ordering of People, explores how international law and international organisations have regulated human mobility over the course of the 20th century, and is under contract with Cambridge University Press. 

She is a Chief Investigator on a collaborative ARC-funded project investigating the journeys, contributions and legacies of European emigre jurists, including Jewish refugee jurists, to Australian law, the legal profession and academia, together with Professors Katherine Biber and Ana Vrdoljak. Her journal article on the admission to Australian legal practice struggles of two Jewish refugee lawyers in the mid-20th century ('Legal Exclusions', published in Federal Law Review in 2021) won the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa ECR article publication prize in 2022.

Sara's expertise in international refugee law centres on issues of state responsibility, externalisation and refugee claim-making. She is involved in a range of collaborations detailing how the provision or denial of healthcare to refugees in Australia’s extraterritorial detention regime constitute new forms of border control and state responsibility externalisation towards refugees and asylum seekers, including a focus on the gendered harms of immigration detention. Her expertise is cited in media articles examining the gendered harms and privatisation of Australia's immigration prisons, the legal limbo of temporary refugee protection, the denial of refugee students' right to education and the impacts of COVID-19 on refugees, migrants and undocumented people in Australia. 

Sara joined UTS Law in January 2017. She holds a BA/LLB (Hons) and PhD in International Law from the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining UTS Law, Sara was a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, where she taught in the Melbourne Law Masters program. She was also a Junior Faculty member of the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School's Doha Workshop in 2015. She has been a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Faculty of Law (2014), and an Associate at the Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW (2015-2018). Sara is currently an External Affilitate and Visiting Scholar at (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders, Migration and Displacement at the Queen Mary School of Law, University of London; an Associate Member of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School; and a member of the Emerging Scholars Network of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW. She is also a co-convener of the advocacy network Academics for Refugees.

Alexandra commenced a Chancellor's Research Fellow at UTS in 2021. She teaches constitutional law and her language policy research draws on qualifications in both law and linguistics. She has lived and worked in China, Switzerland and Australia. 

Alexandra is currently researching new legal directions in Australian government support for Aboriginal language renewal, with a case study of self-determination in relation to NSW’s newly-commenced Aboriginal Languages Act 2017, to inform implementation of the 2020 federal commitment to ‘Close the Gap’ in language vitality. 

Alexandra's book, Language Rights in a Changing China: A National Overview and Zhuang Case Study, came out in May 2021 after almost a decade of doctoral and postdoctoral work (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501512551/html ). Her doctoral dissertation was recognised as the best dissertation on the sociology of language, internationally, through the 2018 Joshua A. Fishman Award.

Alexandra also researches human rights law, specifically the internationally-recognised right to health and Australia's law and policy framework in relation to government communications in languages other than English, and choice of language as part of the freedom of expression.

Alexandra co-runs the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers' Network (an international listserv) and organises related academic events. She writes and records podcasts for the Language on the Move peer-reviewed research website. She is not currently available for PhD supervision.

Miranda Kaye is an Associate Professor whose area of expertise lies in family law. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing on socio-legal research methods to investigate real world impacts of family law principles and procedures.

Miranda has a proven track-record in using qualitative research methods to make recommendations for improved access to justice. For example, with UTS colleagues Jane Wangmann and Tracey Booth, Miranda recently completed a study of the effects of self-representation in the Family Law Court in matters involving allegations of family violence. Funded by the Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) the research made a series of recommendations to improve the experiences and safety of self-represented litigants in such proceedings. The final report won an Australian Legal Research Award for a Non-Traditional Output in 2022.

Miranda also contributes to public policy and debate on family law issues. Her research on the proposal to merge the Family Law and Federal Courts was featured in the Conversation and on ABC radio’s The Signal. Miranda has also made multiple submissions to government inquiries, including a recent consultation by the Attorney-General’s Department on family law and property matters.

Miranda’s recent research has focused on binding financial agreements entered into prior to marriage or commencing a de facto relationship - colloquially known as prenuptial agreements. She is also investigating the issue of financial abuse as it relates to property division in the family courts as well as Hague Abduction matters involving domestic or family violence. Miranda attended and spoke at the HCCH Forum on Domestic Violence and the Hague Abduction Convention. A report of that Forum, written with Merle Weiner and Adrienne Barnett, has been published in the International Journal of Law Policy and the Family and can be read in full here.

Prior to joining the Law Faculty at UTS, Miranda studied law at Cambridge and Oxford and was a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. She also brings to the faculty her experience in the public service (Law Commission of England and Wales) and as a practicing solicitor (family law in the United Kingdom).

Dr Aileen Kennedy is a leading national and international scholar on Australian law relating to sex and gender, with a specific focus on research and advocacy on intersex human rights law. She joined the UTS Law Health Justice Research Centre in April 2023 as a Chancellor's Research Fellow. 

As a Director of Intersex Human Rights Australia (IHRA), a member of the LGBTIQ+ Committee of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, and a national director of Pride in Law, Kennedy is at the forefront of developing and shaping policy and knowledge about social justice and human rights for people with intersex variations.

Following a Bachelor of Arts/Law (Honours) at Macquarie University (1989) and a Master of Law at the University of Sydney (2006), Aileen completed her PhD at UTS (2021). Her thesis considered the impact of neurological theories of binary gender on judicial decision-making for transgender and intersex minors in Australia. Previously, she has worked in the legal profession and held academic roles at University of New England, University of Western Sydney, UNSW Sydney and Macquarie University.

The focus of Aileen’s current research is to provide an analysis of Australian law as it impacts on the intersex population and develop a comprehensive suite of law reform proposals to promote the human rights of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (IVSC).
Her book 'Law, Gender Identity and the Brain' published by Routledge Press, sits at the cutting edge of law and medicine’s engagement with sex and gender to argue that law must develop greater acceptance of dynamic complexity and diversity in the domain of sex and gender. She believes that law must retreat from its determination to create, define, and regulate artificially bounded sex categories of male and female which can lead to violations of embodied integrity and a betrayal of autonomous rights of intersex minors.

With a focus on real-world outcomes, Aileen’s extensive research findings on legal regulation of body transforming medicine, including intersex medical interventions and female genital mutilation have contributed to the developing global debate on the cultural embeddedness of different forms of genital surgeries and medical modifications to the sexed body. Aileen was appointed to the Expert Reference Panel of the Australian Human Rights Commissions report 'Ensuring health and bodily integrity' (2021) on intersex human rights in medical settings. She has also worked with the ACT government in its law reform to regulate medical interventions on minors with intersex variations.

Emeritus Professor Millbank is a leading expert in health law and professional regulation. 

Professor Millbank's socio-legal scholarship reflects her going commitment to developing laws that reflect and adapt to social needs through research that is empirically based, responsive to community concerns, and practical in application. She currently serves on a number of Boards and regulatory agencies working to advance consumer welfare and public health and safety.

I am passionate about using the entirety of my eclectic skill set to try and help people. It's an honour to try and be helpful help. Whether it's sharing a smile with a stranger, smashing stigma around mental ill health, researching mental health detention around suicidality or obtaining victim's compensation despite filing out of time. It might be analysing a problem or inspiring the next generation of social justice warriors. I bring passion, joy, enthusiasm, curiousity and compassion to all that I do. I marshal common sense, legal acumen, volunteer experience, broad corporate legal, commercial, not for profit and government experience for the benefit of the community.

I’m an uber nerd. I’m also disabled. I’m a PhD candidate investigating the intersection of the rights of people with disability and psychiatric detention around suicidality as a Quentin Bryce Law Doctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow at UTS.

• LLM (Competition and Consumer Law), University of Melbourne (2024)
• LLM (Public and International Law), University of Melbourne (2016)
• LLB (Hons) / BA (International Studies) / GDLP, University of Technology Sydney (2008)
• Admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW in 2009 and High Court of Australia in 2010.

Nola Ries is an experienced legal and social science researcher with expertise in: law, health and ageing; legal aspects of health system reform; and the ethical and legal governance of health research. She is a co-founder of the Dementia Law Network and leads a program of research on: legal issues for people living with dementia, their carers and family; dementia capability for the legal profession; and legal and policy frameworks for a dementia-inclusive society. Professor Ries has a strong focus on applied research, community engagement and interprofessional collaboration between legal and health sectors.

Professor Ries has expertise in qualitative research with professional and consumer participants. She has over 100 publications, research reports and related outputs, including more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 25 book chapters. 

Professor Ries has a sustained track record of translating research findings into outputs that are of practical benefit and in advocating for better laws and professional practices, including:

• innovative online courses for lawyers to improve their knowledge about dementia and their ability to work effectively and ethically with clients living with dementia, available through UTS Open
• training for health professionals on medico-legal risks and low-value care, available from NPS MedicineWise Learning and CPD-accredited by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
• practical resource for lawyers, Identifying and Acting on Elder Abuse: A Toolkit for Legal Practitioners, available on Compass, a national website from Elder Abuse Action Australia
• a new kind of advance directive form - an Advance Research Directive - designed with input from dementia researchers and consumers
  
  

Professor Ries teaches Research Methodology, Elder Law and Law & Medicine. She qualified as a lawyer in Australia and Canada.

Linda Steele is a Professor at UTS Law Faculty. She is a socio-legal researcher working at the intersections of disability, law and social justice. She was previously a solicitor with the Intellectual Disability Rights Service.

Linda is a Global Chair at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has previously held visiting scholar roles at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Faculty of Law at Queen’s University Belfast and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University (Canada). In 2024 she was the recipient of the inaugural Hudson-Primer Fellowship Award from Northwestern Pritzker Law School Center for Disability and Racial Justice. In August 2025 Linda commenced a 3 year term on the board of the Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales.

Overview of research

Professor Steele's research has two goals:

(1). To challenge and change legal and public narratives to acknowledge violence, institutionalisation and segregation of disabled people as ableist, harmful and unjust.

(2). To deepen understanding of the utility and limits of using legal methods (such as litigation, redress schemes, truth commissions and law reform) to redress and repair the injustices of violence, institutionalisation and segregation of disabled people.

Linda progresses these goals in a range of contexts including residential institutions and other disability segregated accommodation, restrictive practices, sterilisation and menstrual suppression, criminal justice diversion programs, prison and forensic mental health incarceration, and segregated ('sheltered') employment.

Linda deeply values working with disabled people and Disabled People’s Organisations across many of her research projects. Many of her recent research publications are available in accessible Easy Read summaries at https://www.truthjusticerepair.org/easy-read.

Linda is currently leading a program of research 'Truth Justice Repair' in relation to violence, institutionalisation and segregation of disabled people. Linda is particularly interested in truth-telling, reparations, sites of conscience, and reparative pedagogies. More information is available at https://www.truthjusticerepair.org/.

Linda's earlier research focused on the role of law in carceral control and violence against disabled people. This earlier research used the concept of ‘disability-specific lawful violence’ to understand as legally sanctioned violence incarceration and coercive interventions experienced by disabled people, such as through civil mental health law, guardianship law and court diversion law.

Linda is the author of Disability, Criminal Justice and Law (2020 Routledge) and co-editor of Sites of Conscience: Place, Memory and the Project of Deinstitutionalization (2024 UBC Press), The Legacies of Institutionalisation: Disability, Law and Policy in the 'Deinstitutionalised' Community (2020 Hart Publishing), and Normalcy and Disability: Intersections Among Norms, Law, and Culture (2018 Routledge).

Research

Professor Steele is exploring disability, redress and repair in diverse contexts.

• Current research projects

Disability, truth and repair: Linda is writing a monograph on reparative approaches to disability historical injustice through the case study of disability institutionalisation. This work builds on a recently published article proposing a disability, truth and repair framework which is available to read at https://academic.oup.com/hrlr/article/25/2/ngaf012/8113340.

Reparative urban planning and heritage: Linda collaborates with Professor Phillippa Carnemolla (UTS Design, Architecture and Building) and disability advocacy organisations on research connecting the past, present and future of sites of former disability institutions. 

• In early work they collaborated with Council for Intellectual Disability, People with Disability Australia and Emeritus Professor Leanne Dowse (UNSW) on exploring what people with intellectual disability want the public to learn and remember about disability institutions and an article reporting on this work is available at https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/intljofdissocjus.3.3.0049. Linda and Phillippa continue to this work in collaboration with Council for Intellectual Disability, Hunter Circles and Advocacy for People with Disability Inc on reparative approaches to urban planning and heritage management of sites of former disability institutions.
• They have also collaborated with Council for Intellectual Disability on research supporting its advocacy campaign opposing the tourist rezoning of Peat Island in New South Wales (previously the site of a state-run disability institution for 99 years) and this submission and Easy Read summary are available at https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/peat-island/.
• Linda and Phillippa recently completed a project with Council for Intellectual Disability on learning about and remembering the role of self-advocates in deinstitutionalisation. Easy Read and video resources produces as part of that project are available at https://cid.org.au/resource/remembering-disability-institutions/.
• Linda and Phillippa are collaborating with Speak Out Advocacy and Willow Court Heritage Site Inc on research related to a disability-inclusive and reparative heritage approach to the former Willow Court institution site in New Norfolk Tasmania. The site was recently recognised as a site of conscience by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

Here is a short video on Linda and Phillippa's research: 

https://youtu.be/C8HDf2tXuK0?si=5S7A1zyHvDznYT7L

Civil justice for injury in disability and aged care systems: Linda is collaborating with Professor Kylie Burns (Griffith Law School) on a scoping study to with civil justice lawyers aiming to identify key themes and issues on access to civil justice to inform the design of a larger-scale national study on the perspectives and experiences of injured disabled and older people and their families, civil justice lawyers and advocates on accessing civil justice systems.

The role of families in conceptualising and pursuing redress associated with institutionalisation of disabled people: Linda is collaborating with Professor Allison C Carey (Shippensburg University, USA) on a scoping study aiming to identify key dynamics in the role of families in redress in Australia and the United States of America.

Redressing labour exploitation in disability segregated employment: Funded by Anti-Slavery Australia, Linda is researching Australian Disability Enterprises ('sheltered' workshops) as labour exploitation. The first stage of this research explored how the political and legal re-framing of ADEs as modern slavery opens new possibilities for comprehending and redressing labour-based violence and exploitation of disabled people. The second stage of this research (with Reece Blackett) explores different possible judicial and non-judicial approaches to redressing labour exploitation in ADEs and in relation to 20th century forced labour in disability institutions.

• Recently completed research projects

A reparative approach to redressing human rights violations in aged care: Linda was CI on the project ‘Redressing Neglect and Abuse of People Living with Dementia in Residential Aged Care’ (2021-2022). This project was funded by a Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration – Dementia Australia Research Foundation Pilot Grant awarded by Dementia Australia Research Foundation. International dementia activist Kate Swaffer was an associate investigator on the project, and Dementia Alliance International and People with Disability Australia were project partners. The project explored how we redress systemic and structural harms experienced by people living with dementia in residential aged care. The project produced a set of 'Dementia Reparations Principles' to support future advocacy and policy development on redress, including specialised redress responses and reform of existing complaints/regulatory and judicial processes.

Redress and repair of disability reproductive violence: Linda collaborated with Women with Disabilities Australia on a project exploring redress for reproductive violence against women and girls with disability (2023-2024). The project identified key dimensions of a future advocacy and research framework for redressing reproductive violence against women with disability through exploring design and practice of initiatives for individual and collective redress for reproductive violence worldwide.

Disability institutions as sites of conscience: Linda co-edited with Dr Elisabeth Punzi (Gothenburg University, Sweden) Sites of Conscience: Place, Memory and the Project of Deinstitutionalization (UBC Press, 2025).

Sites of conscience: Linda collaborated with Lily Hibberd and Bonney Djuric from the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Association to explore the role in redressing child institutional abuse of the site of conscience at the site of the former Parramatta Girls Home (‘Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project’). Linda co-edited with Associate Professor Justine Lloyd (Sociology, Macquarie University) a special issue of Space & Culture titled ‘Place, Memory and Justice: Critical Perspectives on Sites of Conscience’.

Disability and menstrual justice: Drawing on her research on sterilisation of disabled women and girls, Linda collaborated with Professor Beth Goldblatt (UTS Law) on research on menstruation, law and justice. In 2020 they were awarded the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ) Annual Publication Award for a published scholarly journal article for their article ‘Bloody Unfair: Inequality Related to Menstruation – Considering the Role of Discrimination Law’ (2019) 41(3) Sydney Law Review. In 2023, Linda and Beth worked with Professor Margaret Johnson (University of Baltimore, USA) on leading the development of 'Menstrual Justice: A Human Rights Vision for Australia'.

Contributions to the Disability Royal Commission

Professor Steele contributed to research related to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability:

Research commissioned by the Disability Royal Commission: Linda collaborated with Associate Professors Claire Spivakovsky and Dinesh Wadiwel on two research projects for the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability - one on inclusive and accessible complaint mechanisms (2022) and one on restrictive practices (2023).

Research with Women with Disabilities Australia: During 2021 and 2022, Linda collaborated with Women with Disabilities Australia on four submissions to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability: restrictive practices, sexual and reproductive rights, guardianship law, and quality & safeguarding. In 2021, Linda appeared at a Royal Commission hearing on sexual and reproductive rights alongside Carolyn Frohmader, former CEO of WWDA.

• Research leadership

Professor Steele is a co-convenor of the UTS Law Faculty's Law Health Justice Research Group (2025-) and previously co-convened the faculty's Feminist Legal Research Group (2017-2024). 

She is a member of the leadership team of the UTS Disability Research Network.

Linda convenes the Disability, Law and Society Network of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. This network brings together disability law researchers across academia, advocacy, activism and policy settings. Please contact Linda if you would like to join.

Teaching

Professor Steele teaches civil court procedure law and mental health and disability law. She is on the author team of the 5th edition of the textbook Civil Procedure and Dispute Resolution in New South Wales (Thomson Reuters, 2025).

In 2021 Linda was the inaugural recipient of the Australian Legal Education Award (ALEA) for Excellence in Teaching (Engagement) for ‘transforming students’ understanding of disability and mental health law and empowering them to become agents of disability justice through engaging with communities’. In 2020 she was awarded the UTS Teaching and Learning Citation for ‘empowering law students to be agents of disability justice’.

HDR Supervision

Professor Steele is the proud supervisor of talented disability law research students: Tom Bailo, Elvira Pertega, and Kate Swaffer. She welcomes sociolegal and interdisciplinary opportunities for PhD research supervision.

Dr Anthea Vogl's research takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to the regulation of migrants and non-citizens, focusing on the social and legal categories of the refugee and irregular migrant. She is co-director of the UTS Brennan Justice and Leadership Program and her areas of expertise and teaching are refugee & migration law, administrative law and legal theory. Anthea is the author of Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination (CUP, 2024), which won the 2024 Book Prize of the Law and Society Assocation of Australasia and New Zealand.

Anthea is currently co-leading an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant on private refugee sponsorship in Australia (2022-2025) and is a national co-convenor of Academics for Refugees, a network advocating for refugee rights and justice. She is an Associate Co-Director of Border Criminologies at the Oxford University Faculty of Law and has spent time as a visiting fellow at the Berlin Institute for Integration & Migration, Humbolt University (2018) and the Centre for Criminology, Oxford University (2019). 
Anthea is admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW. Prior to joining the Faculty, she practised in family law, and in refugee and migrant advocacy in Australian community legal centres and in Canada. She holds a PhD in Law as a Quentin Bryce Doctoral Scholar from the University of Technology Sydney and the University of British Columbia (jointly awarded); an LLM (Research; Dean's Honors) from McGill and a BA/LLB (Hons) from the University of Sydney.

Dr Jane Wangmann's research is primarily concerned with legal responses to domestic and family violence. Jane has particular expertise in understanding how law defines, understands and conceives of this harm.

Jane’s research is multi-disciplinary, drawing on socio-legal research methods and feminist legal theory to investigate the intersection of law and domestic violence and improved access to justice. For example, Jane (with UTS colleagues Professor Tracey Booth and Miranda Kaye) completed a research project on the impact and effect of self-representation in family law proceedings involving allegations of family violence. The project, funded by Australia's National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), made a number of important recommendations to improve the safety and experiences of those involved such proceedings. The report from this research was awarded the 2022 Non Traditional Research Output Award, Australian Legal Research Awards. More recently, Jane with collegaues Associate Professor Miranda Kaye and Kate Thomas were engaged by NSW Legal Aid to evaluate the Hearing Support Pilot Project which provided support to victim/survivors whose criminal or AVO proceeding was being defended in in the Local Court of NSW.

Jane’s expertise in this area is illustrated by her continuing contributions to public policy. For instance, Jane is currently a non-government sector expert appointed to the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team (2014- present), which is responsible for reviewing domestic violence related homicides in order to examine any gaps in the service delivery system and to make recommendations to enhance safety.

In her research, Jane draws on almost 30 years of experience in the field of domestic violence and the law. Jane has previously worked as a solicitor in a community legal centre, as a senior policy officer in the NSW Attorney General's Department (as it was then called) and at the Australian Law Reform Commission. Her deep commmunity based work is recognised for example in 2024 she was awarded, with Ashlee Donohue CEO of Mudgin-Gal, the UTS Law Faculty First Peoples Community Partnerships Award.

Photograph by Andy Roberts