Lucy Fiske is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences at UTS. She was previously a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, and before that held lectureships at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University in Perth and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University.

Lucy comes to academia from a background of direct social work practice primarily with refugees and asylum seekers. Lucy’s practice experience continues to ground and shape her research and teaching, particularly in approaching issues of justice and rights from the perspective of people’s lived experiences and in conducting impact-oriented research.

Lucy is interested in a wide range of human rights related topics with a particular focus on refugees and asylum seekers. For the last ten years, Lucy has been working with a community of refugees in prolonged 'transit' in Indonesia, observing their strategies and practices through the vicissitudes of life without rights. These observations have lead to papers on: citizenship as a social practice, social and cultural transformations through displacement, transformation of lost time into migration capital, education and human rights, and friendship as a challenge to state power. She has also published on Australian refugee politics and policies, on immigration detention, asylum processes, human rights and community development. She is the author of Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention (Palgrave, 2016) and co-editor of Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice: Transformative Approaches in Post-Conflict Settings (Palgrave, 2019).

Lucy previously worked with Prof Rita Shackel (Sydney Law School) and Action Aid on an Australian Aid (ADRAS) funded project exploring women’s experiences of transitional justice following mass violence in Kenya, northern Uganda and the DRC (2013 - 2016).

Lucy is Course Coordinator (Head of Teaching and Learning) for the Social and Political Sciences major within the Bachelor of Communications degree and Research Integrity Advisor for FASS. She serves on the editorial board of Sociological Perspectives on Human Rights and Development (Anthem Press) and on the board of Cisarua Learning Ltd, a registered Australian charity supporting refugee lead initiatives in Indonesia and Thailand. Lucy is project leader of the UTS-LBW Trust Refugee Teacher Training program.