The ANU Centre for Law, Arts and the Humanities (CLAH) is the first of its kind in Australia. It brings together humanities-based research into questions of law and justice, both within the ANU College of Law and across diverse disciplines including art history and theory, literature, philosophy, human rights, history, and cultural studies at ANU. CLAH is building new bridges and opening new dialogues across disciplines, between critical theory and law, and with the wider community. Our world-class research reaches a wide and interdisciplinary audience.
2021 marked a breakthrough year for the Centre, advancing our commitment not just to talking about creativity but to producing work in and with the creative arts, too.
- 'I Weave What I Have Seen: The War Rugs of Afghanistan' June 25-August 15 at Drill Hall Gallery. This extraordinary exhibition was curated by Emeritus Professor Tim Bonyhady AM FAAH FASSA, our esteemed former director, with Nigel Lendon. Find out more here.
- In September 2021, the Centre presented 'For One Day Only', a 24-hour conference involving seminars and panels taking place in Australia, Helsinki, Lucerne, London, Johannesburg, and Virginia. It featured new work in law, space, and materialism. This project showcased our global network and marks a new stage in our collaboration with Lucernaiuris, an interdisciplinary institute at the University of Lucerne.
- Twenty Minutes With the Devil will run at Street Theatre 18-25 June 2022. Part black comedy, part thriller, this remarkable work tackles law and justice in the modern world. Written by director Desmond Manderson and Luis Gomez Romero, here is a fable for the world we live in: a work that takes real problems in the world around us and gives them a vivid imaginative life. By turns suspenseful and reflective, witty, gritty, and poetic, Twenty Minutes With The Devil will grab you by the throat from the very first moment and demand that you, too, make a choice—before time runs out. Live or die, stay or go, trust or betray: we’re all looking for a way out of the locked room of the modern world. A pre-show panel discussion involving both playwrights and Dr Thomas Nulley-Valdes, visiting fellow at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and a Latin American literature scholar, and Associate Professor David Caldicott, clinical senior lecturer at the ANU College of Medicine, will be held on 23 June 2022. More details here.
This is another big year for Centre publications. Our collaboration with Professor Anne Brunon-Ernst, a Visiting Fellow at CLAH and Université Paris II, has led to Surveillance in Law and the Humanities (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). Our successful seminar series, jointly sponsored by the Institute for Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, has led to Bubbles: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in the 21st Century (Law Text Culture, Vol. 22, 2022).
For more information, click the Publications tab below.
CLAH has initiated and continues to develop new collaborations with Canberra’s wealth of cultural institutions, including with the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the ABC, and the Street Theatre. We welcome to ANU visiting scholars and artists, and continue to pursue a range of creative collaborations. For more information, see People.
The Centre has developed a full suite of courses connecting study in law to other disciplines. Its courses in law and the humanities, human rights and literature (with English), philosophies of the body politic (with Philosophy), law and art (with Art History and Theory), and colonialism (with Political and Social Change) are all co-taught with other disciplines, and are open to students not just in law but in these other fields. CLAH offers students in the flexible double degree program a possibility, unmatched elsewhere in Australia, to seriously explore the relationship between their areas of interest. To find out more, see Study.
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Research themes
- Law and Social Justice
- Legal Theory
Our members
Higher degree research students
About CLAH
New Work in a new field
The Centre is the first of its kind in Australia. Through international collaborations, research and teaching, the Centre will build new bridges and open new dialogues in three dimensions: across disciplines; between critical theory and law; and with the wider community.
The Centre is committed to advancing world-class teaching and research in the field. We aim to consolidate and expand domestic and international networks of scholars, and to support new interdisciplinary collaborations.
We are also committed to a strong public engagement with the most important contemporary problems in Australia and around the world—including questions of social justice, human rights, rule of law, globalization, pluralism, and sovereignty. Bringing the insights and traditions of the humanities and the arts to bear on law, justice and ethics in the modern world, has never been more urgent or more necessary.
The Centre reflects the growth of research in law, literature and the humanities—a creative interdisciplinary field in which Australian scholarship leads the world. The Centre is directed by Professor Desmond Manderson, FRSC and draws on his recent Australian Research Council Future Fellowship which pioneered Australian research into representations of law and justice in the visual arts; and by Professor Tim Bonyhady, AO, one of Australia’s leading writers whose work extends from environmental law to art and social history.
Portrait of Professor Desmond Manderson, by Jackie Adcock, 2001
Portrait of Professor Timothy Bonyhady, by Andrew Sayers, Archibald Prize Finalist, 2015
Innovative Teaching
The Centre is taking a university-wide lead in developing major new interdisciplinary courses that will help students bring their degrees and their interests, their career and their passions, together in innovative ways.
- The first of these courses, Literature, Law, and Human Rights, was jointly taught in Law and English in 2017.
- A course on democracy and sovereignty in the 21st century – Leviathan, Art, and Law – will be jointly taught in Law and Philosophy in 2018.
New collaborative courses with other humanities disciplines, including art, history, and politics, are already in development, positioning the ANU as a world leader in teaching interdisciplinary courses in law and the humanities.
Interview of Prof. Desmond Manderson from Richard Sherwin on Vimeo.
An interview with Professor Desmond Manderson on law and the humanities, as part of the 'Visualizing Law in the Digital Age' conference held at New York Law School on 21 October 2011.
17-10-2023
Two teams from The Australian National University (ANU) have battled it out in the grand final of the ANU Gender Identity + Sexuality Moot.
This was the third edition of the mooting competition, which is the first of its kind to focus on the legal issues faced by LGBTQIA+ people and lays bare the law’s ability to mitigate and compound inequality, marginalisation and injustice.
05-09-2023
By Aidan Hookey (student ambassador)
The annual Australian National University (ANU) Gender Identity + Sexuality Moot will return for its third rendition this September.
The competition is the first of its kind to focus on the legal issues faced by LGBTQIA+ people, and lays bare the law’s ability to mitigate or compound inequality, marginalisation and injustice.
15-12-2022
Knowing what the rules are does not mean knowing what the law is.
Associate Professor Joshua Neoh has co-authored a new textbook with Emeritus Professor Nigel Simmonds (University of Cambridge) that takes law students on a journey of jurisprudence to find out what law is.
21-09-2022
Ever wondered what it’s like to study abroad? ANU Law student ambassador Cherish Tay gives us the low-down on her adventures and experiences studying in Taiwan in her new blog series.
By Cherish Tay (student ambassador)
21-09-2022
The Australian National University (ANU) Law Reform and Social Justice (LRSJ) program provides students with opportunities to make a difference in the legal space and apply what they have learned in the classroom to tackle real-world issues they feel passionate about. This series will spotlight the various projects under the umbrella of LRSJ and how students can get involved.
By Neha Kalele (student ambassador)
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Phillipa Weeks Staff Library, Building 7, 4/F, ANU College of Law
This event is about legality and resistance; global culture and local knowledge; film-making as ways of doing and undoing law.
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Law Foyer, Building 5, and Law Link Theatre, ANU College of Law, Fellows Road, Acton
Once Upon a Time in Australia (Counterpress, 2023) explores the tension between law and truth with regards to the #MeToo movements and the events surrounding the March4Justice in 2021. The novel explores the intersections between gender, colonisation, and climate change and how they are necessarily interconnected in a movement for justice.
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Moot Court, ANU College of Law
In Australia, a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is set to be held during this parliamentary term. This moment follows the recent Love-Thoms High Court decision, which raises legal questions of constitutional belonging. In this context, questions of citizenship are at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.
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Zoom
You are invited to join us for a discussion with four leading thinkers on colonial legal imaginaries and southern literary futures, whose work encompasses the histories and traditions of four continents.
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The Street Theatre, 15 Childers St, City West ACT 2601
Part thriller, part black comedy, this play is inspired by events leading to the capture of El Chapo, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, in 2016. But Twenty Minutes With The Devil transcends its original context, opening instead onto a world that is everywhere and nowhere, in an idiom at once strange and familiar. It asks vital questions about law, politics, and justice in the modern world. About the lives and decisions out of our control that seem to hold us all hostage. And the patterns that entrap us in other ways parents and children, myths and beliefs, childhood memories and fantasies of escape.
Members of the CLAH engage in many research projects which employ the theoretical and methodological model of law and the humanities. Their work appears in leading publications and journals around the world. Readers are invited to explore this work on the individual research pages of our members, and to browse our recent publications.
In addition, the Centre works together to develop new collaborations and joint projects. This involves collaborations with the Early Modern Conversions project at McGill University; an application for funding through the COST program for Literature and the Rule of Law in the New Europe; and the development of a Summer School in Law and the Humanities here at ANU. We will provide regular updates on these activities and collaborative projects.
Listed below are a selection of recent publications by Centre members, in alphabetical order by surname under each subheading.
Please note this is not a complete list of all the publications of all our members. Please see the 'People' tab, and click on the link to their personal profile page for more publications and for a link to their ANU Researchers profile for a complete list.
Recent books
- Bonyhady, Good Living Street (2011)
- Bonyhady,The Enchantment of the Long-haired Rat: A Rodent History of Australia (2019).
- Gozdecka, Rights, Religious pluralism and the Recognition of difference (2015).
- Manderson, Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts(2019).
- Manderson, Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law (2012).
- Manderson,Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, Critique (2018).
- Manderson, Littoral Readings –Representations of Land and Sea in law, Literature, and Geography (2015).
- Strange, C., Honour violence and emotions in history (New York: NYU Press, 2016)
- Strange, C. et al, eds., Honour Killing and Violence: Theory, Policy and Practice (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Recent book chapters
- Henne, K and Shah, R 2016 (in press), Feminist Criminology and the Visual. In Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Crime, Media and Popular Culture. Brown, M, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Henne, K 2015, Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
- Neoh, J ‘Law and Love in Eden’, in Paul Babie and Vanja Savić (eds), Law, Religion and Love (Routledge, forthcoming)
- Neoh, J. Rothwell, D and Rubenstein, K, ‘The Complicated Case of Stern Hu: Allegiance, Identity and Nationality in a Globalized World’, in Fiona Jenkins, Mark Nolan and Kim Rubenstein (eds), Allegiance and Identity in a Globalized World (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
- Strange, C. ‘Mercy and Parole in Anglo-American Criminal Justice Systems, from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century,’ in Paul Knepper and Anja Johansen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice Oxford: OUP, 2016
Recent refereed journal articles
- Gozdecka, DA., 'A Community of Paradigm Subjects?, Rights as corrective tools in culturally contested claims of recognition in Europe', Social Identities, Issue 3, 2015 (forthcoming).
- Gozdecka, DA. and Jackson, AR., ‘Caught Between Different Legal Pluralisms: Women Who Wear Islamic Dress as the Religious ‘Other’ In European Rights Discourses’, (2012) Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 64:2011
- Gozdecka, DA., Jackson, AR., ‘Caught Between Different Legal Pluralisms: Women Who Wear Islamic Dress as the Religious ‘Other’ In European Rights Discourses’, (2012) Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 64:2011
- Gozdecka, DA., ‘Human rights, fundamental rights and the common constitutional traditions in the protection of religious pluralism and diversity in Europe – a study in the democratic paradox’, (2012) Finnish Yearbook of International Law, 2010
- Gozdecka, DA., ‘Catholic Family Values instead of Equality - Polish Politics Between 2005-2007 Envisioning the Role of Women.’ (2009) in Sulkunen Irma, Nevala-Nurmi Seija-Leena, Markkola Pirjo (eds) ‘Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship - International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reforms’ Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.
- Gozdecka, D.A., Kmak Magdalena, and Airytman Ercan Selen, ’ From Multiculturalism to Post-multiculturalism: Trends and Paradoxes', (2015) Journal of Sociology vol.50 no. 1 51-64
- Henne, K 2014, 'The "Science" of Fair Play in Sport: Gender and the Politics of Testing', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 787-812.Neoh, J. ‘Jurisprudence of Love in Paul’s Letter to the Romans’ (2016) 34 Law in Context [Special Issue on ‘Law and Love’]
- Henne, K 2014, 'The Emergence of Moral Technopreneurialism in Sport: Techniques in Anti-doping Regulation, 1966-1976', International Journal for the History of Sport, vol. 31, no. 8: pp. 884-901.
- Henne, K 2013, 'From the Academy to the UN and Back Again: The Travelling Politics of Intersectionality', Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, vol. 33. URL: http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue33/henne.htm
- Henne, K and Troshynski, E 2013, 'Mapping the Margins of Intersectionality: Criminological Possibilities in a Transnational World', Theoretical Criminology, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 455-473.
- Henne, K and Shah, R 2012, 'Re-imagining the Images of the Crimino-Legal Complex: Toward a Critical Pedagogy', The Critical Criminologist, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 4-9.
- Manderson, D, 'Towards Law and Music: Sara Ramshaw, Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore (Oxford: Routledge, 2013)' (2014) Law and Critique, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 311-317.
- Manderson, D, 'Memory and Echo: Pop cult, hi tech and the irony of tradition' (2014) in C Davies, S L Knox (ed.), Cultural Studies of Law, Routledge, London, pp. 11-29.
- Manderson, D, 'Judgment in law and the humanities' (2013) Revista Forumul Judecatorilor, vol. 1, pp. 43-62.
- Manderson, D, 'Making a Point and Making a Noise: A Punk Prayer' (2013) Law, Culture and theHumanities, vol. Online (published dates tbc), pp. 1-15.
- Manderson, D, 'The Law of the Image and the Image of the Law: Colonial Representations of the Rule of Law' (2012) New York Law School Law Review, vol. 57, no. 2012/13, pp. 153-168.
- Manderson, D, 'Modernism, Polarity, and the Rule of Law' (2012) Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, vol. 24, pp. 475-505.
- Manderson, D, 'Between the Nihilism of the Young and the Positivism of the Old - Justice and the Novel in D.H. Lawrence', (2012) Law and Humanities, vol. 5.
- Manderson, D, 'Mikhail Bakhtin and the Field of Law and Literature' (2012) Law, Culture and theHumanities, vol. 8.
- Manderson, D, 'Klimt's Jurisprudence-Sovereign Violence and the Rule of Law', (2015), Oxford Journalof Legal Studies, vol. Online Early Version, no. 2015, pp. 1-28.
- Manderson, D, 'Bodies in the Water: On Reading Images More Sensibly' (2015) Law and Literature, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 279-293.
- Manderson, D & van Rijswijk, H, 'Introduction to Littoral Readings: Representation of Land and Sea in Law, Literature, and Geography' (2015) Law and Literature, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 167-177.
- Manderson, D, 'Literature in Law - Judicial Method, Epistemology, Strategy and Doctrine.' (2015) University of New South Wales Law Journal, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 1300-1315.
- Manderson, D, 'The Metastases of Myth: Legal Images as Transitional Phenomena' (2015) Law andCritique, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 207-223.
- Naffine, N and Neoh, J ‘Fictions and Myths in PGA v The Queen’ (2013) 38 Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 32.
- Neoh, J ‘The Rhetoric of Precedent and Fulfilment in the Sermon on the Mount and the Common Law’ (2013) Law, Culture and the Humanities.
- Neoh, J, ‘Text, Doctrine and Tradition in Law and Religion’ (2013) 2 Oxford Journal Law and Religion 175.
- Neoh, J. ‘Law and Love in Abraham’s Binding of Isaac’ (2015) 9 Law and Humanities 237.
- Neoh, J. ‘The Name of God on Trial: Narratives of Law, Religion and State in Malaysia’ (2014) 18 Law Text Culture 198 [Special Issue on ‘The Rule of Law and the Cultural Imaginary in (Post-Colonial East Asia’)
- Roberts, H. ‘Why (Re)Write Judgments: Australian Feminist Judgments (2015) 37 Sydney Law Review 257 (with Laura Sweeney)
- Roberts, H. ‘Telling a History of Australian Women Judges Through Courts’ Ceremonial Archives’ (2014) 40 Australian Feminist Law Journal 147
- Roberts, H. ‘“Swearing Mary”: The Significance of the Speeches Made at Mary Gaudron’s Swearing-in as a Justice of the High Court of Australia’ (2013) 34 Sydney Law Review 493
- Roberts, H. “Law and Literature: Analysing style in judgment writing” in Gabrielle Appleby and Rosalind Dixon The Critical Judgments Project: Rereading Monis v The Queen (with Associate Professor Gabrielle Appleby) (The Federation Press, 2016
Recent refereed journal articles
- Bonyhady, T 2013, Wohllebengasse: Die Geschichte meiner Wiener Familie, Zsolnay-Verlag, Germany.
- Bonyhady, T 2013, 'Man and Nature', in Roger Butler (ed.), Stars in the river : the prints of Jessie Traill, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, pp. 45-50.
- Bonyhady, T 2011, Good Living Street: The Fortunes of My Viennese Family, Allen & Unwin, Australia.
- Bonyhady, T 2007, 'Out of Aghanistan', in (ed.), Woven Witness: Afghan War Rugs, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, pp. 41-49.
- Neoh, J, ‘Just Jurisprudence: Review of Philip Pettit’s Just Freedom’ (2015) 40 Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy
Our partners
CLAH values our links with colleagues at centres working in this area around Australia and internationally. We are actively working on projects, exchanges, and collaborations with important sites of research into law and the humanities and legal theory. In particular—
- Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia
- Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School
- Legal Intersections Research Centre, University of Wollongong
- Centre for Critical Thought, Kent Law School
- Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University
- Law & Humanities Program, Dipartmento di Giurisprudenza, Roma Tre
- Centro di Ricerca per l’Estetica del Diritto, Universita di Reggio Calabria
Graduate study
Students with a passion for interdisciplinary research on the intersection of law and justice issues with history, continental philosophy, art theory and criticism, literary and cultural studies are strongly encouraged to undertake higher degree research and doctoral work in law and the humanities at ANU.
ANU offers international expertise right across law, arts, and the social sciences. The Centre for Law, Art and the Humanities brings together this expertise and works to generate new synergies and a critical mass of intellectual energy. We analyse historical and contemporary issues, drawing on humanistic perspectives through a range of theoretical frameworks in legal and social theory, continental philosophy, and post-colonial studies.
For further information, contact the Directors or Members of the Centre (on the People tab). They can help you craft your proposal and identify supervision resources best able to support your interests.
For examples of the kinds of projects our higher degree research students undertake, please see the list of HDR students on the People tab. Click through to their personal profiles for more information on their thesis projects.