Director's Report

Congratulations to Pip Nicholson

The ALC is both proud and delighted that our Director, Professor Pip Nicholson, has been appointed Dean of Melbourne Law School starting from 29 January 2018. Pip has been the Director of the Asian Law Centre since 2013. Under Pip’s leadership, the Asian Law Centre has grown and strengthened tremendously. During this time, we have expanded our membership as well as our research, outreach and teaching programs. This is particularly so in Indian law, where we now boast an active and expanding program of research, academic exchange and teaching.

Pip is a world leading scholar on the Vietnamese legal system. Her work is particularly influential in the areas of comparative law, the death penalty, and courts and judicial reform in East and Southeast Asia. Whilst Pip is leaving as Director of the Asian Law Centre, we are looking forward to working with her closely as Dean.

Congratulations and Recent Appointments

We are very pleased to welcome Associate Professor Tarun Khaitan, who will join the Asian Law Centre as Associate Director (India) in February 2018. Tarun was awarded a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship and will work on his project 'Constitutional Resilience in South Asian Democracies'.

We are also very pleased to welcome Jeff Redding, who will join MLS and the Australia India Institute as a Senior Fellow and New Generation Scholar in January 2018. We are looking forward to working closely with Jeff on his project on non-state Muslim courts in India and their relationship to the Indian state.

Congratulations also to Sally Low who was recently awarded her PhD on the topic ‘Courts, Codes and Power: The Making of Law in Colonised Cambodia'.

Mary Kozlovski has joined the team at the Asian Law Centre as a Research Centre Administrator while Ade Suharto is on secondment. Welcome to Mary!

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

This year has been a very productive year for members of the Asian Law Centre. I have set out here a selection of the books published this year.

  • Professor Pip Nicholson and Professor Tim Lindsey published Drugs Law and Legal Practice in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam with Bloomsbury.
  • Associate Professor Jianlin Chen has recently published The Law and Religious Market Theory: China, Taiwan and Hong Kong with Cambridge University Press. We will look forward to the book launch in early 2018 and welcome you to attend.
  • Associate Professor Stacey Steele and Mr Hayden Opie have edited Match-fixing in Sport: Comparative Studies from Australia, Japan, Korea and Beyond with Routledge.
  • Professor Sarah Biddulph has co-edited (with Flora Sapio, Susan Trevaskes, and Elisa Nesossi) Justice: The China Experience published by Cambridge University Press.
  • Dr Wendy Ng’s book The Political Economy of Competition Law in China will soon be published with Cambridge University Press.

Research Grants

Members of the Asian Law Centre have again been successful in obtaining competitive grant funding for research projects. Amongst these are: Pip Nicholson and Cheryl Saunders, with a Folke Bernadotte Academy Grant for Managing Inclusion for Sustainable Peace Through Constitutional Implementation and Susan Kneebone, Antje Missbach (Monash) and Heru Susetyo (Universitas Indonesia) for Indonesia’s Refugee Policies: Responsibility, Security and Regionalism.

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes for 2018

Our deepest thanks go to all of you who have supported the Asian Law Centre and our activities throughout the year.

As usual, we have had a very busy year full of teaching and events.  Some of these are set out in the newsletter.  A full account will be in our Annual Report.

We will look forward to engaging closely with you next year, and hope that you will be able to participate in many of the Centre’s activities. We already have an exciting program of seminars, conferences and academic visitors scheduled!

We are particularly indebted to our staff, colleagues, friends and students for their ongoing support and engagement.

I wish you all a safe and happy festive season. I also hope that you manage to take some time off to celebrate with family and friends.

Best wishes for the New Year from me and all of us at the Asian Law Centre.

Best wishes,

Professor Sarah Biddulph
Interim Director
Asian Law Centre