Dr Jessica Hambly
Primary tabs
ANU College of Law, Bld 6, Fellows Rd, Acton ACT 2600
ANU College of Law, 5 Fellows Rd, Acton ACT 2600
Research interests
Biography
I joined the ANU College of Law as a Postdoctoral Fellow in February 2020. My current work draws on interdisciplinary critical and socio-legal methodologies to look at access to justice for people seeking asylum and the meaning and significance of 'fairness' in asylum procedures. My broader research interests relate to questions of inclusion and participation in 'legal spaces', notably with regard to: gender and migration; radical lawyering; legal ecologies and geographies; border and boundary law; and court and tribunal architectures.
My PhD was a socio-legal study of the role of lawyers in UK asylum appeals (University of Bristol 2017, supervised by Professor Dave Cowan and Professor Lois Bibbings, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council). I have an MSc in Socio-legal Studies from the University of Bristol (2011), a BCL (Distinction) from the University of Oxford (2010), and an LLB (1st Class) from King's College London (2009).
From 2015-17 I worked with Dr Devyani Prabhat on the ESRC-funded 'Citizenship and Law Project', looking in particular at children's citizenship rights. In 2018-19 I joined the ASYFAIR project, a comparative study of asylum appeal procedures around Europe, led by Professor Nick Gill of University of Exeter, UK, and in this role I was primarily based at the French National Asylum Court. Between 2017-2019 I also volunteered with grassroots refugee law clinics on the Greek islands of Lesvos and Samos.
I am a qualified yoga teacher and joined the board of directors for The Yoga Impact Charity in February 2020.
Appointments
- Associate Research Fellow - ASYFAIR Project, University of Exeter, UK.
- Director, The Yoga Impact Charity.
Significant research publications
- with Gill, N. et al. (2020) 'What’s Missing from Legal Geography and Materialist Studies of Law? Absence and the Assembling of Asylum Appeal Hearings in Europe' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
- Hambly, J. and Gill, N. (2020) ‘Law and Speed: Asylum Appeals and the Techniques and Consequences of Legal Quickening’ Journal of Law and Society 47(1), 3-28
- Hambly, J. (2019) ‘Interactions and Identities in UK Asylum Appeals: Lawyers and Law in a Quasi-legal Setting’ in Gill, N. and Good, A. (eds), Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies Series
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2018) ‘A Brave New British Citizenry? Reconceptualizing the Acquisition of British Citizenship by Children’ Studies in Law, Politics, and Society Sarat, A. (ed) Vol. 76, 25-47
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2017) ‘The Practice of Immigration and Nationality Law: Setting Boundaries of Specialization at the Margins’ Onati Socio-Legal Series Vol. 7(7), 1509-1531 (from paper at ‘Working the Boundaries of Law’ workshop, Onati, 2016)
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2017) ‘Bettering the Best Interests of the Child Determination: Of Checklists and Balancing Exercises’ International Journal of Children’s Rights Vol.25 (3-4), 754-778
Please note, only a small selection of recent publications and activities are listed below.
Book chapters
- Hambly, J. (2019) ‘Interactions and Identities in UK Asylum Appeals: Lawyers and Law in a Quasi-legal Setting’ in Gill, N. and Good, A. (eds), Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives
Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies Series
Refereed journal articles
- with Gill, N. et al. (2020) 'What’s Missing from Legal Geography and Materialist Studies of Law? Absence and the Assembling of Asylum Appeal Hearings in Europe' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
- Hambly, J. and Gill, N. (2020) ‘Law and Speed: Asylum Appeals and the Techniques and Consequences of Legal Quickening’ Journal of Law and Society 47(1), 3-28
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2018) ‘A Brave New British Citizenry? Reconceptualizing the Acquisition of British Citizenship by Children’ Studies in Law, Politics, and Society Sarat, A. (ed) Vol. 76, 25-47
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2017) ‘The Practice of Immigration and Nationality Law: Setting Boundaries of Specialization at the Margins’ Onati Socio-Legal Series Vol. 7(7), 1509-1531 (from paper at ‘Working the Boundaries of Law’ workshop, Onati, 2016)
- Prabhat, D. and Hambly, J. (2017) ‘Bettering the Best Interests of the Child Determination: Of Checklists and Balancing Exercises’ International Journal of Children’s Rights Vol.25 (3-4), 754-778
Conference papers & presentations
- 2020 'Law and Speed - Asylum Appeals and the Techniques and Consequences of Legal Quickening' The Society of Legal Scholars Conference (Virtual / Exeter, UK)
- 2019 ‘Law and the Speedscape of Asylum Appeals at the French National Asylum Court’ ASYFAIR Mid-project Review Workshop, University of Exeter.
- 2018 ‘Appellant Participation in Asylum Appeals in the UK and France’ LSAANZ, Legal Intersections Research Centre, University of Wollongong, New South Wales. Supported by SLSA Early Career Bursary.
- 2018 ‘Administrative Alienation: Comparing Appellant Participation in Asylum Appeals’ Kaldor Centre for Refugee Law, Emerging Scholars Network Meeting, UNSW, Sydney. Supported by Kaldor Centre Travel Bursary.
- 2017 ‘Lawyers in UK Refugee Tribunals’ and Author meets Reader Session with Prabhat, D. – ‘The Force of Law Unleashed? Lawyers and Legal Formalism’ Law and Society Association Conference, Mexico City.
- 2015 ‘Rebels with a Cause: The Working Lives of Advocates in Refugee Tribunals’ GLSA, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto.
- 2015 ‘Decision-making in Asylum Tribunals and the Role of Legal Representatives’ Research for Change Forum, University of Bristol Law School.
- 2014 ‘(Un)Professional Relationships and the Struggle for Expertise in Asylum Appeals’ European Asylum Adjudication Procedures Workshop, Bern, Switzerland
- 2014 ‘Advocacy and Judging in Asylum Appeals’ Refugee Law Initiative Workshop, Senate House.
- 2014 ‘Asylum Advocates and Tribunal Adjudication: Complexifying the Workgroup’ SLSA Annual Conference, Robert Gordon University Aberdeen.
- 2013 ‘Advocacy in Asylum Tribunals: Developing a Methodology’ Legal Research Network Summer School, Université Lille Nord de France.
- 2013 ‘Communities at the Edge: Barriers to Justice at the UK Asylum Tribunal’ Law on the Edge Conference, Canadian Law and Society Association and the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, UBC Vancouver.
- 2012 ‘Kylie and Cocktails: Constructing Gender and Sexuality in the Asylum Tribunal’ Critical Legal Studies Conference, Stockholm.
- 2012 ‘Gender and Judging in the UK Asylum Tribunal’ Law and Society Association Conference, Hawai'i.
Commissioned reports
- 2020 'Inferno at the Greece-Turkey Border' Gisti/Migreurope Mission Report - English Version available at: https://www.gisti.org/IMG/pdf/report_samos_2020.pdf
Other
- Hambly, J. (2020) 'Islands, Detention, and Refugee Rights in 'Crisis" ANU International Law and Covid-19 Essay Series, Available at: https://law.anu.edu.au/research/essay/covid-19-and-international-law/isl...‘crisis’
- Hambly, J. (2018) ‘Cut-Price Justice at the French National Asylum Court.’ Border Criminologies Blog, Available at: www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder...
- Hambly, J. (2018) ‘Court on Strike: French asylum reforms trigger months of action at the CNDA’ Socialist Lawyer 79 pp. 10-11
- Hambly, J. and Carver, N. (2017) ‘Brexit and Unemployment: Where Bureaucracy Becomes Brutal’ Available at: www.opendemocracy.net/natasha-carver-jessica-hambly/brexit-where-bureauc...
- Prabhat, D., Hambly, J., Valdez, S. (2016) ‘Children’s British Citizenship: Exposing Barriers to Registration’ Policy Bristol Report
- Prabhat, D., Hambly, J., Valdez, S. (2015) ‘Registration of Children as British Citizens’ Policy Bristol Report
Research interests
LLM Masters thesis supervision
2020 Natasha Chabbra - 'From treaty to field : A case study of the role of international law in sexual and gender-based violence programming in humanitarian emergencies'
Past courses
- Constitutional Rights (University of Bristol)
- Law and State (University of Bristol)
- Socio-Legal Theory (University of Bristol)
