Professor Caron Beaton-Wells

Overview

Caron Beaton-Wells is currently the Dean and CEO of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, having formerly been Dean, Internal at the Melbourne Business School. She is also an honorary Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School and a lay Member of the Australian Competition Tribunal.

Over the period 2002-2019, Caron held various leadership positions at the Melbourne Law School, including as Director of the University's Competition Law & Economics Network and co-Director of the Global Competition and Consumer Law Program.  She was Associate Dean of the Law School’s undergraduate and masters programs and a member of the School’s executive management team.  She was also the founding Program Director of a world-first award-winning online masters program in global competition and consumer law.

As an academic in competition policy, law and regulation, Caron’s research and teaching extended beyond the law and economics to institutional, political and sociological dimensions, and her major research projects focussed on competition and privacy in the context of digital platforms, competition and fairness in concentrated industries, challenges in cartel law and enforcement and the interface between competition and consumer law. A snapshot of her previous research projects can be found on the Competition Law & Economics Network. She was also the host of the podcast show, Competition Lore, exploring the challenges of competition in a digital economy (on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).

Caron taught a range of competition law-related subjects in Juris Doctor and masters programs and through her extensive engagement activity contributed to the public discourse in Australia and around the world on significant competition law-related issues, bringing together and fostering constructive debate and shared learning amongst stakeholders.

Caron was a member of several national and international editorial and advisory boards, consulted to the OECD, ASEAN, SSNED and the New Zealand Government. She was a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network and the Law School's representative on UNCTAD's Research Partnership Platform. Formerly a solicitor at (now) King & Wood Mallesons, Caron was also a member of the Law Council of Australia's competition and consumer and small business committees.