Professor Caron Beaton-Wells

Overview

Caron Beaton-Wells is Deputy Dean at the Melbourne Business School and a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School. She is the former Director of the University's Competition Law & Economics Network and co-Director of the Global Competition and Consumer Law Program. She is also a lay Member of the Australian Competition Tribunal.

Her research and teaching in this field has extended beyond the law and economics to institutional, political and sociological dimensions of competition policy, and her recent research projects have 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 is the host of the podcast show, Competition Lore, exploring the challenges of competition in a digital economy (on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).

Caron has been Associate Dean of the Law School’s undergraduate and masters programs and a member of the School’s executive management team.  She was the founding Program Director for the School’s first online masters program, in global competition and consumer law. This program harnesses the power of technology and draws on an international faculty associated with the Law School, to offer in-depth rigorous and highly innovative masters level courses in competition and consumer law to students from around the world.

Caron has taught a range of competition law-related subjects in Juris Doctor and masters programs, including a recent subject on Big Data: Competition Policy and Law. Her engagement activity involves contributing to the public discourse in Australia and around the world on significant competition law-related issues and on bringing together and fostering constructive debate and shared learning amongst stakeholders.

Caron is a member of several national and international editorial and advisory boards, has consulted to the OECD, ASEAN, SSNED and the New Zealand Government, is 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 is also a member of the Law Council of Australia's competition and consumer and small business committees.