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Rob Nicholls
Visiting Fellow
PhD (UNSW), MA (UNSW), BSc (Hons) (B'ham)
Contact details
Brief overview
Rob is a senior lecturer in the UNSW Business School having joined that faculty in September 2015 after post-doctoral studies at UNSW Law. His research interests encompass competition law and policy as well as the regulation of networked industries and the financial services sector.
He is a member of the Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation at UNSW Law. Before his appointment, Rob was a research fellow at the Centre for International Finance and Regulation where he is investigated the intersection of competition law and financial services regulation and at Swinburne University of Technology where he researched spectrum management policy. He is also a visiting fellow at UTS Sydney Law.
Rob has had a 30-year career concentrating on competition, regulation and governance, particularly in networked industries. His first degree was in electronics engineering and he has worked for major corporates, in turnarounds and start-ups. Before moving to academia, he worked for Webb Henderson, the ACCC and spent 12 years as a client-facing consultant at Gilbert + Tobin.
Rob is an accredited mediator and the Independent Telecommunications Adjudicator in a regime established to deal with wholesale disputes arising over both legacy services and migration to the national broadband network. He is also a member of the NBN arbitration pool.
Areas of expertise
Telecommunications regulation
Broadcasting regulation
Regulation of networked industries
Market analysis in competition law context
Competition in retail financial services
Expert determination
Accredited mediator
Centre
Memberships
Senior Member: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Practitioner member of the Resolution Institute
Member of the International Telecommunications Society
Associate member of the American Bar Association
Member of the NBN Co arbitration pool
Grants
Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation 2018 - co-Chief Investigator with Dr Katharine Kemp on a project that has received funding of $6,500 entitled “Data as a Source of Market Power”.
UNSW-Tsinghua Collaborative Research 2018 - named investigator with Professor Deborah Healey, Associate Professor Heng Wang and Dr Weihuan Zhou on a project that has received funding of $20,000 entitled “Financial Innovation and Regulatory Change in the Context of (De)globalisation: China’s Approach and the Implications for Australia”.
Centre for Social Impact 2017 - Lead Chief Investigator on a CSI grant of $9K entitled “Franchisees – Consumers or Capitalists: Locating added value in franchise systems” with co-Chief Investigator Professor Jenny Buchan.
UNSW Course Design Tool Pilot Work Plan 2017 - $10K grant
Business School SRG $10K January 2017
DVC(E) Course Design Tool Pilot Educational Grant $10K December 2016
Centre for Social Impact Grant $10K December 2016
Business School SRG $9.6K January 2016
CIFR Project TS020 - $230K awarded in September 2014
ARC DP 150100887 ‘Spectrum After Scarcity’ - $360K awarded in November 2014 named research fellow with Professors Jock Given, Martin Cave and Erik Bohlin