Postgraduate Research Students
Takele Soboka Bulto
Thesis: Towards Realisation of the Human Right to Water through the African Human Rights System
Supervisors: Dianne Otto and Colin Fenwick
Takele Soboka Bulto, (Ethiopia) holds LLB and MA degrees from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and an LLM degree from University of Pretoria, South Africa. Takele won the Best Research Award at University of Pretoria, where his research on the inter-American system of human rights was named the best paper. He also won the Best Student Medal from Addis Ababa University upon completion of his MA studies in International Relations. His recent work entitled “Beyond the Promises: Resuscitating the State Reporting Procedure of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights” has been published in Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 12, 2006. Takele has worked as a judge and lecturer in Ethiopia. He has represented victims of human rights violations from Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Kenya and Angola and defended their cases before the two African regional human rights bodies: the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.
His PhD thesis analyses the normative content of the human right to water within the African regional human rights system. Considering that every single African state has at least one water source to share with another state, Takele’s research looks at rules of public international law pertaining to the consumptive utilisation of international waters to ensure that sufficient water resources are available to the state which would use this resource to respond to domestic water rights. Thus his thesis locates the human right to water at the intersection of public international law and international human rights law. Given the normative paucity surrounding the right to water in Africa (and elsewhere) his research aims at analysing the core content of the right to water and the mechanisms available in the African human rights system for the realisation of the right.
Nicola Charwat
Thesis: Contesting Global Governance: A Critical Examination of Amicus Curiae Briefs in the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body
Supervisor: Dianne Otto
Nicola’s thesis discusses whether the use of amicus curiae briefs in the DSB may be used to resist and transform neo-liberal economic governance embodied in the WTO, or whether their inclusion merely serves to legitimise neo-liberal economic governance and discipline resistance even as it appears open to it. The admission of amicus curiae briefs in the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) in 1998, four years after its establishment, is often presented as a hard won victory for civil society. According to the conceptions of governing at the global level, effective, efficient and democratic governance requires the recognition and encouragement of governing-beyond-the-state, which includes a role for the state, the market and civil society. The WTO however, follows a neo-liberal conception of global governance, which promotes ‘market governance’ through the agenda of trade and services liberalisation, but excludes civil society and non-market concerns.
Carolyn Graydon
Thesis: Domestic Violence in Timor-Leste: Is There a Place for Indigenous Justice Systems?
Supervisors: Tim Lindsey and Dianne Otto
Carolyn worked as an advocate in the area of refugee and immigration law for several years and then with the United Nations in Timor-Leste as a human rights officer. This experience triggered her interest in Timorese women’s responses to gender violence, more particularly their use of formal and indigenous justice systems. Carolyn’s thesis focuses on indigenous processes of developing and protecting human rights, more specifically, justice processes and their potential for long term transformation so that they are better able to deliver the justice and protection sought by Timorese women. In 2006 and 2007 she lectured at Melbourne University in the subject Law and Society in Southeast Asia.
Megan Brodie
Thesis: The Effectiveness of National Human Rights Institutions’ Strategies and Responses to Human Rights Violations in the Asia-Pacific Region
Supervisors: Dianne Otto and Brian Burdekin (external)
Meg Brodie completed a BA(Hons)/LLB(Hons) at the University of Melbourne and is now undertaking her Masters at Melbourne Law School. Her Masters thesis focuses in particular on the Human Rights Commissions of Mongolia and India, where she has conducted field research under the auspices of an Endeavour Research Fellowship. A lawyer, Meg has worked in both the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. Alongside her studies, Meg directs the youth leadership organisation Global Emerging Leaders and sits on the Board of the Oaktree Foundation, a youth run aid and development organisation focusing on education.
Lia Kent
Thesis: Exploring Expectations of Transitional Justice in Timor Leste
Supervisors: Dianne Otto, Jennifer Balint and Julie Evans
Lia holds a BA and a MPubIntLaw (University of Melbourne) and a MSW (Latrobe). Her fields of interest include postconflict reconstruction, transitional justice and reconciliation. Lia has worked in the field of human rights and development for over ten years, in Australia and East Timor, including for non-government and intergovernmental organisations such as Oxfam and the United Nations. Lia is currently in the second year of her PhD which considers the transitional justice processes undertaken in East Timor during the period of United Nations Administration, and, in particular, the differing expectations of transitional justice held by international, national and local actors. The project aims to reflect critically on the adequacy of transitional justice models for dealing with the complex and long-term needs of societies emerging from periods of conflict.
Kasia Lach
Thesis: The EU and the Contemporary Notion of State Sovereignty
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Carolyn Evans
Kasia Lach is in the final year of her PhD candidature at Melbourne Law School. She studied law and political science at the University of Warsaw, Poland. After completing her Masters degree in 2001 she continued her education at the University of Melbourne where, in 2004, she obtained a Master of Commercial Law. Kasia previously worked for the United Nations Association of Australia, and the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre. She also participated in two research projects at the School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology, concerning Political Corruption in Central and Eastern Europe and People Trafficking in Europe. Kasia was awarded the Australian Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. During her stay at the Institute she has participated in a number of research projects concerning the impact of European law on constitutional law, human rights and institutional market design in EU Member States. Recently, as a Poland Country Expert, she has been involved with the European Judicial Training Network in Brussels.
Cressida Limon
Thesis: Genes, Biotechnology and Legal Imaginings
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Lee Godden
Cressida Limon is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne and a lecturer at the Law School, Victoria University, Melbourne. Cressida’s PhD thesis is concerned with narratives of invention and reproduction at the intersection of law and techno-science. Cressida is particularly interested in the reading and writing practices of the genre referred to as ‘patents on life’. In her thesis, Cressida draws on feminist and poststructuralist theories of law, language and materiality to challenge the dominant view that links patents to techno-economic progress.
Daniel Muriu
Thesis: Recognition, Redistribution and Resistance: Assessing the Usefulness of Human Rights in the Task of Realising Better Health in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Context of Challenges Posed by International Economic Actors
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Jennifer Beard
Daniel Muriu is a PhD candidate in the Melbourne Law School. Daniel’s thesis examines the usefulness of human rights as a strategy for realising or ensuring better health in Africa especially in the context of the pervasive power of international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Using insights from Third World Approaches to International Law and the writings of Michel Foucault, he argues for a conceptualisation of human rights that recognizes the limits of human rights as instruments of recognition, resistance and redistribution particularly in the light of the activities of the aforesaid non-state actors.
Daniel completed his LLB with Honours at the University of Nairobi, Kenya in 1992 and his LLM with distinction at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2002. A research paper Daniel submitted as part of his LLM, Paying Lip Service to the Principles of Regulation: A Comparative Critique of the Telecommunications Laws of Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon and Sri Lanka, was published in the Journal of African Law, University of London in 2002. Prior to commencing his doctoral studies at Melbourne, Daniel was a partner at Hamilton Harrison and Mathews, which is the oldest and largest law firm in Kenya, offering a full range of legal services to both local and international clients. His specialisations in legal practice have been in corporate, commercial, banking and intellectual property law amongst others. Since 1997, he has also worked on a pro bono basis for human rights organisations providing legal aid to women and children in Kenya and was a founder member and trustee of the Child Rights, Advocacy and Documentation Legal Centre (CRADLE) which is the foremost children rights organisation in Kenya.
Edward Mussawir
Thesis: Jurisdiction: The Expression and Representation of Law
Supervisors: Peter Rush and Anne Orford
Edward has taught in the Melbourne Law School and in the Criminology department at the University of Melbourne and is currently completing a doctoral thesis addressing the place that various models of jurisdiction have had within a Western tradition of jurisprudence. His research focus is concerned with the jurisdictions of personality, possession and procedure. Drawing a theoretical influence from Gilles Deleuze, Edward has been interested in finding ways of addressing an expressive genre in jurisprudence. He has published in such journals as Law and Literature, The Australian Feminist Law Journal and Studies in Law, Politics and Society on themes ranging from Franz Kafka to law and cinematic representation. Other topics within Edward’s academic interest include issues of jurisdiction relating to animal law, terror-related procedures of control and the sexuate legal personality of children.
Yoriko Otomo
Thesis: The Changing Landscapes of Risk: A Feminist Jurisprudence of the International Law of Occupation and International Economic Law
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Jenny Beard
Yoriko Otomo has worked in several government and non-government environmental organisations, and has contributed to publications relating to sustainable development, environmental law and humanitarian issues. Her doctoral thesis seeks to develop a semiology of law through a poststructural feminist analysis of key texts within the law of occupation and international economic law.
Connal Parsley
Thesis: Giorgio Agamben and the Failure of Law
Supervisor: Peter Rush
Connal has lectured legal theory in the Melbourne Law School over the last 5 years. He has published a variety of pieces analysing aspects of legal discursive power, especially using the Australian legal system as a setting, often in connection with discourses of the public in art and law. His current project is a Masters thesis analysing the work of Giorgio Agamben concerning law and the image in relation to that thinker’s presentation of a coming politics.
Olivera Simic
Thesis: Is the zero tolerance approach to sex between UN peacekeeping personnel and local people in the context of UN peacekeeping operations the best way to prevent “sexual exploitation” in the future?
Supervisors: Dianne Otto and Michelle Foster
Olivera Simic has an LLM in International Human Rights Law (Essex University, UK) and MA in Gender and Peacebuilding (UN University for Peace, Costa Rica). For more than a decade she has been working as Gender and Law Consultant for different agencies (UNICEF, OSCE, ICMPD etc). Also, she has been actively engaged with projects related to women’s and children’s human rights in different capacities (activist, researcher, trainer, tutor, lecturer). Her fields of interests are gender, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, organized crime, militarism, war, peacekeeping, reconciliation.
Her thesis argues that, although the zero tolerance policy should be welcomed as the first important step towards comprehensive recognition of the problem of “sexual exploitation” in the UN peacekeeping context, the policy is not only problematic because of its broad definition of “sexual exploitation”, but for several other reasons as well. In her thesis she examines why and how the zero tolerance policy was tailored as well as what assumptions it makes, in particular about the people with whom it is most concerned. Her thesis aims to explain bewilderment about the zero tolerance policy’s broadly defined term of “sexual exploitation”. Search for the identification of the fine line between coerced sex and different layers of consensual sex lies at the heart of her research project.
John Tobin
Thesis: Between Apology and Utopia: An attempt to map out the content of the right to health under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Philip Alston
It has been said that ‘one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial or nebulous human right than the “the right to health”’which ‘is characterised by conceptual confusion as well as a lack of effective implementation’.The aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which clarity can be brought to the content of the obligations which States parties have assumed under article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Deborah Whitehall
Title: Hannah Arendt, reproductive rights and the legal discourse between body politics
Supervisors: Anne Orford and Ann Genovese
Deborah's research uses the work of Hannah Arendt as a resource for reworking familiar metaphors of human rights in ways that reveal the transformative potential of Law. She is particularly interested in how social and political theory can be used to generate questions about women's reproductive rights that reset the framework in which the options for reform might be considered. Deborah's project reflects her ongoing interest in the tensions between rights discourse in international human rights law and national law and the political and social trajectories in which human rights are given substance. Deborah has studied and taught law in Australia and the United Kingdom, and has experience in law reform, and as a solicitor in the public and private sectors.