Jelena holds an LLB(First Class) and BA(German, and Political Science) from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and an LLM(First Class) from the University of Cambridge. She was awarded the Hollond-Whittaker Studentship in Law by Trinity College, Cambridge, to pursue her doctoral studies there, commencing October 2016. She submitted her thesis in July 2019, before joining the ANU as a Lecturer in Law.

Jelena’s doctoral thesis, “A more principled approach to the conflict between privacy and freedom of expression in the law of misuse of private information”, examines the resolution of cases in misuse of private information, with a view to making judicial reasoning more transparent, principled and consistent. She applies analytic philosophy and the concept of rights-conflicts, arguing courts must approach such cases with a method of reasoning that is clearly anchored in the normative underpinnings of the conflicting rights. She explores different theories of rights-conflict resolution and the philosophical underpinnings of privacy and freedom of expression, before critiquing current doctrine, finding it to be dominated by utilitarian considerations of the ‘public interest’, and ultimately disengaged from the two rights. She argues for a re-orientation of the common law to the very rights which it purports to protect, and proposes a new “tailored proportionality-optimality method”, for adjudicating informational privacy.

During her time at Trinity, Jelena received grants from the Rouse Ball/Eddington Funds, Hollond Fund, and Yorke Fund, to pursue, and present internationally, her other and related research, on children’s privacy (Trinity College Dublin), conflicts of fundamental rights (Society of Legal Scholars Conference, QMUL), policing speech (McGill University, Montreal), and proportionality in rights-based private law adjudication (Public Law Conference, Melbourne University). Her article on children’s privacy and parental control was published in the Human Rights Law Review, and her article on privacy, public law and private law was published in Public Law. She has also published in the Journal of Media Law, on open justice, privacy and freedom of expression.

Jelena’s 2019 UKCLA note, ‘Unconstitutional Abuse of Parliamentary Privilege’, was cited by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales in his address to the Commonwealth Law Conference.

Jelena has been invited to present her work to the Cambridge Centre for Public Law; the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy; Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster; KU Leuven; Università Degli Studi di Genova; and the Trinity Forum.

Between undergraduate and graduate study, Jelena practised in a commercial law firm in Wellington, New Zealand, specialising in public law, international trade, parliamentary process and executive decision-making. During this time she wrote in favour of legislative reaffirmation of parliamentary privilege in New Zealand.