Staff

Dr Peter Brent
University of Melbourne

Dr Peter Brent's PhD dealt with the history of electoral administration in Australia and he has researched and written extensively on electoral matters, particularly registration (enrolment). He also writes on electoral behaviour. From 2011 to 2013 he was a member of the Australian Electoral Commissioner’s Advisory Board for Electoral Research (CABER).

Dr Paul Kildea
Gilbert & Tobin Centre for Public Law
University of New South Wales

Dr Paul Kildea is a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Law School and the Director of the Referendums Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law. His primary areas of research are referendums, election law and federalism. He is a co-editor of Tomorrow’s Federation: Reforming Australian Government (Federation Press, 2012) and has published in law and political science journals, both within Australia and internationally, including the Public Law Review, the Australian Journal of Political Science and the Election Law Journal. Paul is currently undertaking research into the use and regulation of referendums in Australia, the UK, Ireland and New Zealand.

Katrina Sanders
Principal Legal Officer, NSW Electoral Commission

Katrina Sanders is Principal Legal Officer at the NSW Electoral Commission. She worked at the NSW Crown Solicitor’s Office for over ten years and has expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, privacy law and legislative development. She has been at the NSW Electoral Commission since 2023.

Professor Rodney Smith
Department of Government and International Relations
University of Sydney

Rodney Smith is Professor of Australian Politics in the Department of Government at the University of Sydney, where he has worked for the past 16 years.  He has published widely on aspects of Australian elections and electoral behaviour.

Dr Ferran Martinez i Coma
Senior Lecturer and Director of Engagement, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University

Dr Ferran Martinez i Coma is Senior Lecturer and Director, Engagement in the School of Government and International Relations. An applied political scientist with consulting, public policy, research and teaching experience, his current research specialises in elections, electoral integrity, comparative politics, political parties and electoral behaviour. Before Griffith, Ferran worked at the University of Sydney and at the Centro de Investigaciones y Docencia Economicas (CIDE) in Mexico City. Ferran has also been a policy practitioner at the national - Spain's Prime Minister's office- and local level (Barcelona City Hall). He has written policy reports for international organizations such as the Organisation of American States (OAS), and think tanks such as the Centre for American Progress (USA), Hanns Seidel Foundation (Germany, Namibia and Kenya) and Fundacion Alternativas (Spain). Ferran is current ARC grant is exploring How can Political Actors shape turnout? and has published in top-leading journals in political science, sociology and economics.

Professor Lisa Hill
University of South Australia

Lisa Hill is a Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide. Her areas of interest are electoral studies, political theory and history of political ideas. She has written extensively on electoral topics including correlates and effects of turnout levels, informal voting  and electronic voting. She is particularly interested in compulsory voting and other institutional mechanisms for enhancing electoral inclusion. She is co-author (with Jason Brennan) of Compulsory Voting: For and Against, New York/London: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Lisa is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia.

Dr Jonathon Louth
University of South Australia

Jonathon Louth is a research fellow at The Australian Alliance for Social Enterprise (TAASE).

Jonathon has worked across government, the community sector and academia both in Australia and the United Kingdom. He has previously worked as an advisor for the South Australian Government.

Jonathon’s research focuses on intersections between political economy and the lived experience of the everyday. An interest in the philosophy of (social) science and complex systems underpins much of this research.

Dr Michaela Spencer
Charles Darwin University

Dr Michaela Spencer is a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University. Her background is in environmental science, sociology, geography and Science and Technology Studies (STS), with her doctoral studies focusing on recent practices of environmental management and governance in Tasmania. Her current research involves working from the ‘Ground Up’ with Indigenous knowledge authorities, and differing traditions of knowledge and governance. This involves collaborative research for policy development, and engaging with government, service providers, university staff and Indigenous people in remote communities. So far this research has been focused around issues such as disaster resilience, emergency management, governance and leadership, remote engagement and coordination, volunteering and women’s health and wellbeing.

Dr Robert Hortle
University of Tasmania

Rob is Deputy Director & Senior Research fellow at the Tasmanian Policy Exchange, University of Tasmania. He is a skilled researcher and consultant with over ten years’ experience in international development, academia, and consultancy in the UK, Australia, and the Pacific. He holds an MPhil and DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to this, he graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in International Relations and Indonesian. Rob's research focuses on political institutions and wellbeing in hybrid regimes, and he has previously been seconded to the Australian Electoral Commission's International Engagement Team.

Professor Brian Costar
Institute of Social Research
Swinburne University of Technology

Professional Brian Costar graduated BA (1970), MA (Qual) (1973) and PhD (1981) from the University of Queensland. His career included academic positions in Political Science and History at UQ (1971-77), QUT (1974-75),Chisholm Institute of Technology (1978-90) and Monash University (1990-2005) He was appointed to Swinburne University of Technology in 2005 as Professor of Victorian State Parliamentary Democracy—Emeritus since 2016. Research interests are in Australian politics, particularly electoral systems and behaviour, the National Party of Australia and Victorian and Queensland State Politics.

Dr Chiara De Lazzari
School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University

Dr Chiara De Lazzari is a Lecturer in Politics and IR in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Australia. She has published journal articles and book chapters in the areas of political participation of migrants, citizenship rights, and language policies in Italy and Australia. Her monograph titled Transnational Politics, Citizenship and Elections: The Political Engagement of Transnational Communities in National Elections was published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis) in 2019. Her research interests include citizenship rights, political participation of diasporas, and the political participation of migrant youth. She has also worked as a Political Analyst for SBS Italian Program and has extensive experience in media engagement and public

Dr Yee-Fui Ng
Monash University

Yee-Fui is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University. She  is the author of The Rise of Political Advisors in the Westminster System (Routledge, 2018) and Ministerial Advisers in Australia: The Modern Legal Context (Federation Press, 2016), which was a finalist of the Holt Prize. Dr Ng has previously worked as a Policy Adviser at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, a Senior Legal Adviser at the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, as well as a Manager at the Victorian Department of Justice. Yee-Fui has also practised as a solicitor at top tier law firms in Melbourne, London and Canberra.

Ashley Carr
Victorian Electoral Commission

Dr Martin Drum
The University of Notre Dame Australia

Martin Drum is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle, WA.  He has recently conducted research projects on parliamentary committees in WA, election promises, and the electoral fortunes of party defectors.  He regularly produces electoral analysis for media outlets ahead of state and federal elections.  His book, Politics in Australia, was published in 2012.

Professor Alan Fenna
Curtin University

Professor Fenna researches and supervises postgraduate students in the areas of Australian government and politics, Australian public policy, and Australian and comparative federalism in The John Curtin Institute of Public Policy (JCIPP).  He is the author of Australian Public Policy, 2nd edn (2004); co-editor of Government and Politics in Australia, 10th edn (2013); co-author of Comparative Federalism: a systematic inquiry, 2nd edn (2015); co-author of Interrogating Public Policy Theory: a political values perspective (2019); and author or co-author of a range of journal articles and book chapters (see below). He has recently completed Australian Research Council funded research on inequality and the distributional effects of the Australian welfare state and an international research project on the dynamics of federal systems (Publius: the journal of federalism, vol. 49, no. 1). Professor Fenna served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) 2009-10.

Mr Justin Harbord
Western Australia Electoral Commission

Justin Harbord is the Director Election Operations at the Western Australian Electoral Commission. He has extensive electoral experience covering operations, legislation, policy, technology, reform, communications and distributions of electoral boundaries spanning more than 20 years.

Professor Sarah Murray
University of Western Australia

Dr Sarah Murray is a Professor at the University of Western Australia and is an expert in constitutional law and legal institutional change. Her publications include Constitutional Perspectives on an Australian Republic - Essays in Honour of Professor George Winterton (ed) (2010) and The Remaking of the Courts - Less-Adversarial Practice and the Constitutional Role of the Judiciary in Australia (2014). Her doctoral thesis was awarded the 2011 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal by Monash University and she was the recipient of a 2015 UWA IAS Distinguished Early Career Fellowship. Professor Murray visited the Centre for Court Innovation in New York as the 2017 recipient of the Fay Gale Fellowship.

Associate Professor Aaron Martin
School of Social and Political Sciences
The University of Melbourne

Aaron Martin was educated at the ANU, the Institute of Political Studies (Paris), Stanford University and the University of Melbourne. He returned to Melbourne University as Lecturer in Political Science Research Methods in 2010. Aaron's research focuses on using survey experiments to understand public opinion towards important policy issues like automation, trust in news stories and behavioural public policy. He is the author of Young People and Politics: Political Engagement in the Anglo-American Democracies (Routledge) and, with Keith Dowding (ANU), Policy Agendas in Australia (Palgrave). He is currently Co-Director of the Policy Lab. Aaron has led the University's involvement in Vote Compass over the past three federal elections and has been a Visiting Researcher at McGill, Princeton and Vanderbilt. He also sat on the Australian Electoral Commissioner's Advisory Board on Electoral Research.

Newsletter Editor

Dr Peter Brent
Swinburne University

Dr Peter Brent is an adjunct fellow at Swinburne University. His PhD dealt with the history of electoral administration in Australia and he has researched and written extensively on electoral matters, particularly registration (enrolment). He also writes on electoral behaviour. From 2011 to 2013 he was a member of the Australian Electoral Commissioner’s Advisory Board for Electoral Research (CABER).

Legal Editor

Dr Yee-Fui Ng
Monash University

Yee-Fui is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University. She  is the author of The Rise of Political Advisors in the Westminster System (Routledge, 2018) and Ministerial Advisers in Australia: The Modern Legal Context (Federation Press, 2016), which was a finalist of the Holt Prize. Dr Ng has previously worked as a Policy Adviser at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, a Senior Legal Adviser at the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, as well as a Manager at the Victorian Department of Justice. Yee-Fui has also practised as a solicitor at top tier law firms in Melbourne, London and Canberra. Yee-Fui researches in the areas of political integrity and the law, as well as the interaction between public law and politics. She's particularly interested in the influences on the contemporary executive, such as ministerial advisers, the media and lobby groups, which have led to reactive government decision-making and policy-making.