Research culture and philosophy
UNSW Law is a world-leading law faculty. It comprises the Law School and affiliated legal research, education and advocacy centres. The quality of the Faculty’s research is recognised by a consistently high level of prestigious funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and other bodies.
With 112 academic staff comprising world-class researchers, practitioners and industry experts, UNSW Law has a long tradition of excellence in applied legal research which has been used to strengthen and enhance the practices of both the legal profession and industry.
As a postgraduate research candidate at UNSW Law, you will undertake research and produce an original body of work under the supervision of leading academics.
You can choose to complete a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or Master of Laws by Research.
Areas of specialisation
UNSW Law has particular research strengths in: business and commercial law, constitutional and public law, criminal law, criminal justice and criminology, evidence and civil procedure, human rights and social justice, Indigenous peoples and the law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, law reform, legal institutions and governance, legal theory, national security and terrorism and private law.
To ascertain if the Faculty has a potential supervisor available for your proposed area of research please visit the Research section of our website which provides information on the research interests of the Faculty staff.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is also a significant feature of the Faculty’s work: with several current research projects involving colleagues from other faculties within the University and collaborative work with academics at other universities around Australia and overseas. As well, the Faculty includes staff with doctorates in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and philosophy, as well as in law.
Despite the areas of specialisation that exist in the Faculty, it is also of particular relevance that its special research focus is inspired by its broader commitments. One foundation stone of the Faculty’s work, for example, is its commitment to social justice – specifically the examination of the limits and possibilities of the law in attempts to achieve social justice. This commitment leads inevitably to a second commitment: law is not to be studied by artificial abstraction, but rather in its social, economic, and political contexts as a distinctive and flexible source of discipline, regulation and facilitation.