Justine Poon

PhD Candidate
BA LLB (1st Hons)
Room H Block Open Plan

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Biography

Justine graduated in 2012 from the University of Technology, Sydney with a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours and a Bachelor of Arts in Commmunication (Media Arts and Production). She is a published writer and a filmmaker. Her PhD thesis examines the legal consequences that are activated at the moment asylum seeker boats cross the Australian sea border and the work that language and metaphors in political discourse do in shaping our understanding of the limits of law and sovereignty.

Appointments

Recent news

27
Jul
2017
Justine Poon at the Greater Together Exhibition
ANU Law PhD candidate Justine Poon has written a “Letter to the Land” for an artwork currently featuring in an exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne.
13
Sep
2016
Justine Poon
PhD candidate Justine Poon will represent the ANU College of Law on Wednesday at the University's Three Minute Thesis finalwith her presentation on refugee law.
Ready4Recognition Video Screenshot
If you're confused about the referendum for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, you need to watch this video.

Past events

08
Jul
-
17
Sep
2017
Justine Poon at the Greater Together Exhibition
10.00AM to 5.00PM Exhibition

PhD Student and LRSJ Manager Justine Poon has a 'Letter to the Land' included in the Greater Together art exhibition at ACCA in Melbourne.

07
Mar
2017
Law Reform and Social Justice
1.00PM to 2.00PM Information session

Want to find out more about who ANU Law Reform and Social Justice are, or what we do? Are you interested in joining a project? Do you have ideas you are burning to share with like-minded students? Come along to our Info Session in Week 3!

Research projects & collaborations

  • 2015 Visiting PhD scholar at the Human Rights Consortium (Refugee Law Initiative), School of Advanced Study, University of London

Conference papers & presentations

  • 'Border, Body, Sea: How does the asylum seeker appear in law and political images?', Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference: Complicities (University of Technology Sydney, 2015)

  • 'How a Body Becomes a Boat: Metaphors and the legal recognition of asylum seekers in Australia', Critical Legal Conference: Law Space and the Political (University of Wrocław, Poland, 2015)

  • 'Encounters at the Border: The disembodiment of asylum seekers and the embodiment of sovereignty in Australian law and discourse', Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory: Borderlines (University of Melbourne, 2014)

  • 'Border, Body, Sea: The tidal flow of bodies and three stories about sovereignty', Migrants Outside the Frame of Community Symposium (The Australian National University, 2014)

  • 'The Persistent Demand of the “Queue” in Australian Refugee Law and Discourse or Five Ways of Looking at a Queue', Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference: Interpellations (The Australian National University, 2013)

Philosophy & approach

Teaching is a collaborative exercise between me and my students. As well as making sure they understand the content, I aim to help students understand the processes of legal reasoning and critical thinking.

Past courses

  • Torts
  • Lawyers, Justice and Ethics

Topic

Border, Body, Sea: Legal Metaphors and Political Discourse in Australian Refugee Law.

Program

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Further information

This thesis is a critical theory examination of legal change in Australian refugee law. Australian refugee law has been in recent times one of the most active areas of law. Its legislation and its jurisprudence have been both influenced by and produced ideas about sovereignty, legal personality and subject-hood, and the creative imagination of space and jurisdiction. The border, the body and the sea are the major metaphors that set the stage for, and form the focus of, the particular legal changes examined. Within the conceptual system of law, legal change takes place in no small part due to the cognitive and epistemological shifts that the use of metaphors enables. Close examination of the deployment of these metaphors in the law, and in the political discourses that shape our understanding of the law, can reveal to us the relationship between language, concepts and law.

Associate Supervisor

Updated:  10 August 2015/Responsible Officer:  College General Manager, ANU College of Law/Page Contact:  Law Marketing Team