Triple success at the Australian Legal Research Awards

It’s a win, win, win for UTS at the Australian Legal Research Awards

Professor Jessie Hohmann took out the Non-traditional Research Outputs category, while Dr Alexandra Grey was recognised in the Early Career Research (ECR) Article/Chapter category. Associate Professor Alecia Simmonds won the Book category for Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law.

Professor Jessie Hohmann

Professor Hohmann worked with collaborators at the University of Sydney and UNSW Sydney to produce an online and physical exhibition that showcased a range of international legal memorabilia. It included merchandise like UNICEF Barbie and UN Headquarters Lego, as well as other material objects that bridge the gap between the law and popular culture.  

The goal was to create an archive of these objects that could help people, including international lawyers, to see the law in new ways, and to recover some of the ‘things’ of international law that might otherwise be forgotten. Fun was also an overarching goal, with visitors to the physical exhibition invited to create their own international law action figure. 

“A project like this can feel a little irreverent in a discipline where our fellow international lawyers are seeking to prevent war crimes or further human rights,” Professor Hohmann says.  

“These are projects that we’re also involved in, but it was great to have the recognition of our peers that this project, too, is important and significant in its own way.”

I’m thrilled to see our researchers being recognised for their incredible work. 

Their successes reflect the ethos of our research approach, which is all about achieving impact, developing our researchers and engaging meaningfully with the broader community.

Professor Anita Stuhmcke, Dean of UTS Law 

Dr Alexandra Grey

Dr Alexandra Grey, a UTS Chancellor’s Research Fellow, was the winner of the ECR Article/Chapter category for a work called Communicative Justice and Covid-19: Australia’s Pandemic Response and International Guidance. It was published in the Sydney Law Review in 2023.    

The article examined how Australian governments communicated with the public during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted a range of failures in the provision of information in languages other than English. It also advocated for governments to adopt the ‘Four As’ of effective communication — available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable — to improve future public health campaigns.  

“Australia has certain obligations under international law to ensure people enjoy the human right to health,” Dr Grey says.  

“The knowledge this article is contributing is valuable for governments and community groups advocating for better rights and services.”  

Associate Professor Alecia Simmonds

Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law won the Book category for Associate Professor Alecia Simmonds. It captures a tangled history of love and the law told through 10 legal biographies.

As one of the first histories of love to be written from the perspective of the working classes, Courting explores the way the governance of love has shifted from the law to psychology and asks readers to think about the ethics of love as we know it today. 

“It’s also a fundamentally feminist book — it argues that the first women to articulate an economic value to their domestic labour were in fact working class women,” Associate Professor Simmonds says.

“It also shows how women in Australia used the courts to hold men to account, be it for breaking their promises or, as in many cases, for sexual assault. To this extent, my book offers a pre-history to our current #metoo moment.”

Collectively, UTS’s ALRA success speaks to the quality and innovation of research produced within the Faculty of Law. As a young university of technology, UTS is known for its bold approach to practice-based research that delivers vital impact in the wider world.  

READ MORE about the Australian Legal Research Awards