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Commence February 2010 Completion February 2013 Vanessa Diaz Rodriguez “Regulation and protection of the right to informative self-determination and the registration of biometric profiles in Australia, Mexico, United States and Spain.” Currently researcher at Instituto de Investigaciones
Jurídicas de la UNAM
Derecho de la Información Mexico City
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Tom Baxter Thesis Topic ‘A Tale of Two Systems / A Clash of Cultures: The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) and the Tasmanian Regional Forestry Agreement’ Tom graduated from UTAS then worked for Hobart law firm Dobson, Mitchell & Allport from September 1997 to December 1999. From January 2000 to May 2003 he was Legal Officer for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Government statutory authority responsible for management of the Great Barrier Reef. In June 2003 he returned to UTAS as a Lecturer in the School of Accounting and Corporate Governance. In mid-2007 Tom obtained approval to take 80% leave for 3 years and took up a PhD scholarship. After that his position reverts to 100% full-time Lecturer.
Tom is an alternate chair of the University's Discipline Panel.
He also currently serves on the board or management committee of the following organisations:
-The Friends' School (Board of Governors, Executive Committee, Finance Committee)
-National Environmental Law Association (National Executive committee)
-Tasmanian Environmental Defenders Office (committee)
-Tasmanian Peace Trust (committee).
Research Interests Corporate Governance and Accountability; Environmental and Planning Law Teaching Commercial Transactions
Corporate Regulation and Accountability |
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Valerie Williams - Right to Legal Representation for the Mentally Ill Commenced March 2009 Completion March 2012 Valerie was awarded a BA/LL.B from the University of Tasmania in 1994 and a LL.M from the University of Northumbria (UK) in 2007. Her interests lie in human rights, administrative law and social justice. She considers herself fortunate to have worked as a barrister and solicitor for the Aboriginal Legal Service, as the last Deaths in Custody Officer for Tasmania, and for the past 10 years, the Mental Health Advocate. She has developed a number of innovative Tasmanian programs over the years including the Mental Health Tribunal Representation Scheme which has been providing free, competent representation for the past 6 years to Tasmania’s mentally ill. Her thesis in on the right of the mentally ill to legal representation when appearing before mental health tribunals, boards of review and courts on civil commitment and involuntary treatment orders in Australia, USA, UK, Canada and New Zealand and it will explore why, in some jurisdictions, people are unable to exercise their right. The thesis will examine the future direction of legal representation through a therapeutic jurisprudential lens with a focus on clinical legal education. |
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Rhys Stubbs - PhD study _ Democratisation and the Diffusion of Information Rights
Commenced February 2008 Expected Completion February 2011 Abstract
The thesis concerns the spread of freedom of information law within the context of global democratisation.
Freedom of information law has spread rapidly since the 1990s. What began as seemingly isolated transmissions has quickly expanded into a case of world-wide diffusion.
The thesis addresses the question of why is this expansion has occurred. It does so from a political science viewpoint and must therefore take into consideration broader questions of socio-political change.
From this perspective, the explosion of information rights must be considered in relation to global democratization. The spread of freedom of information law is part of a wider process of political change that has occurred over the past fifty years, namely the diffusion of political democracy.
With this in mind, the study addresses two key questions. What forces are driving global democratisation (i.e. what relative roles do domestic and international factors play in the spread of democracy)? And are such forces apparent in the expansion of freedom of information law?
The central argument of the thesis is that the contemporary spread freedom of information law and democracy is largely a top-down process, driven by a dialectical relationship between domestic and international factors.
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Weibing Xiao - PhD study - FOI Reform in China: Information Flow Analysis. Commenced August 2007 Prposed Submitted October 2009 Abstract
Most non-Chinese scholars have approached Freedom of Information (FOI) in China as a recent, strange and intriguing phenomenon. This thesis uses an array of Chinese sources, interviews with Chinese officials and citizens and information flow analysis to propose a more complex and detailed understanding of the evolution of FOI in China. The thesis argues that information flow, a theme to explore the gradual development of government receptivity to FOI in an information environment through a temporal dimension, can be used as a new explanatory model for FOI reform in a jurisdiction. China is adopted to substantiate this argument. The origins of China’s FOI legislation need to be understood within the context of improved information flow resulting from changed social, political, legal and economic conditions. This improved information flow has constituted an enabling environment for the adoption of FOI legislation. This thesis also argues that it is necessary to reassess the widely divergent origins of FOI reform in China. By applying the analytical device of information flow, the thesis asserts that social, political and legal factors should be accorded central roles in understanding the development of FOI in China. Economic growth and anti-corruption efforts in the process should be allocated important but secondary roles. This thesis uses an information flow analytical tool to find that FOI reform in China formed part of a much longer process of increased transparency in the Chinese information environment, which gradually shifted from the acceptance of proactive disclosure to that of reactive disclosure. FOI thus has become a beneficiary of this gradual transformation of the Chinese information environment. This is the reason that China has adopted a ‘push’ model of FOI legislation stressing proactive disclosure of government information, which differs from many countries that have introduced a ‘pull’ version of FOI legislation emphasising reactive disclosure through responses to access requests. The thesis maintains that existing compliance analysis focuses too heavily on reactive disclosure, and thus is restricted in its application to China. It therefore utilises a revised compliance analysis model that focuses on both proactive and reactive disclosure. The revised model incorporates findings from empirical research conducted in China, allowing a more effective and dynamic analysis of compliance issues in China. Whilst information flow analysis in this thesis is limited in its application to an explanation of China’s FOI phenomenon, it may have wider applicability |
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