First General Meeting

We are in the process of arranging the first annual general meeting of AALTRA (date to be confirmed). We have received the following nominations for office bearers (thank you to these colleagues):

Nick James: President

Sophie Riley: Vice President and Treasurer

Meg Good: Secretary

Ashleigh Best: Committee Member

Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere: Committee Member

Jed Goodfellow: Committee Member

Christine Parker: Committee Member

We shall advise details of the AGM shortly. In the meantime if anyone would like to nominate for Treasurer, Sophie will withdraw her nomination for that position.

 

BIOGRAPHIES FOR NOMINEES

 PROFESSOR NICK JAMES (President)

Professor Nick James is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law at Bond University. He is a former commercial lawyer and has been practising as an academic since 1996. He is passionate about legal education and the role of law schools in modern society. His areas of teaching expertise include law in context, legal theory, animal law, business law, and company law. He has won numerous awards for his teaching including a National Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, and he is the author of three textbooks: Business Law, Critical Legal Thinking and The New Lawyer (with Rachael Field and Jackson Walkden-Brown). He has written numerous journal articles, book chapters and conference papers in the areas of legal education, critical legal theory, and disruption of the legal services sector.

Professor James is Executive Director of the Bond University Centre for Professional Legal Education, Executive Editor of the Legal Education Review, Immediate Past Chair of the Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA), and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

 

DR SOPHIE RILEY (Vice-President & Treasurer)

Sophie Riley is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney(UTS) where she teaches and researches animal law, environmental law and environmental ethics. She is passionate about animal protection and inspiring the next generation of animal lawyers.

Sophie Sophie’s research and publications focus on animal protection, including the protection of “pest” species, and she is the lead editor of an Animal Law Case Book, written by UTS students of Animal Law and Policy. The book is freely available online. https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2015%20Final%20Version%20ANIMAL%20LAW%20CASE%20BOOK%201.pdf. Currently, Sophie is finalising a book on the commodification of farm animals.

Sophie also occupies a number of University and community positions, including: a legal researcher for the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at UTS; a member of GAL, the Global Animal Law expert group https://www.globalanimallaw.org/foxes/index.html; a category C member (animal welfare) of the Animal Research Review Panel (ARRP), a government body that oversees Animal Ethics Committees in New South Wales; and, a review editor for IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and

Ecosystem Services) for Global Thematic Assessment of Invasive Alien Species and Their      Control. Sophie also served for six years as a co-chair of the Teaching and Capacity Building Committee of the Legal Academy for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

 

DR MEG GOOD (Secretary)

 Dr Meg Good is the Senior Program Manager and Legal Counsel at Voiceless, originally joining the Voiceless Team in January 2017 as the Animal Law & Education Manager. She holds a PhD in law and has over ten years of tertiary teaching experience. In addition to her role with Voiceless, Meg is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Tasmania, co-ordinating their ‘Animal Law’ unit.

Meg has held positions with various animal law organisations, including the Animal Law Institute (former Director of Education), the Barristers Animal Welfare Panel (former National Co-Ordinator & Tasmanian Co-Ordinator) and the Australian Animal Protection Law Journal. She was the inaugural recipient of the RSPCA Australia Sybil Emslie Animal Law Scholarship.

Prior to joining Voiceless, Meg was a Voiceless Grant Recipient (to run Tasmania’s first animal law conference), member of the Voiceless Legal Advisory Council and a regular speaker in the Voiceless Animal Law Lecture Series. She has had a lifelong passion for animal protection, and believes in the power of the law and education to help improve the welfare and protection of Australia’s animals.

 

ASHLEIGH BEST (Committee Member)

Ashleigh is a PhD Candidate at Melbourne Law School and a graduate researcher within the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law. Ashleigh’s doctoral research examines the legal status of animals in disasters, marrying her long-standing interests in animal law, environmental law and jurisprudence. Ashleigh is also a Teaching Fellow and an occasional Guest Lecturer at Melbourne Law School.

Ashleigh is currently a member of the Global Research Network’s Animals and Biodiversity Think Tank. She was previously the Vice Chair and Submissions Coordinator of the NSW Young Lawyers Animal Law Committee, and has worked as a legal research assistant on animal law projects at UTS and Melbourne Law School. Ashleigh writes about animal law for academic and mainstream audiences, and is a keen contributor of policy submissions to government inquiries. In 2020, Ashleigh was the recipient of the RSPCA Australia Sybil Emslie Animal Law Scholarship.

Ashleigh holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Social Inquiry), a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours and University Medal) and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice. Before commencing her PhD, she worked as a lawyer in private practice at Allens, and later at the NSW EPA.

 

MARCELO RODRIGUEZ FERRERE (Committee Member)

Marcelo is a senior lecturer in Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, and PhD candidate at the University of Alberta. His research and teaching interests included animals and the law and administrative law and he is an author of Wells on Animal Law in New Zealand. His current doctoral research focuses on the constitutionality of animal welfare enforcement in Canada and New Zealand.

 

DR JED GOODFELLOW (Committee Member)

Dr Jed Goodfellow  BA/LLB (Hons), GDLP, PhD

Jed Goodfellow is an animal welfare lawyer and Senior Policy Officer at RSPCA Australia with a focus on legislative and regulatory issues affecting animal welfare. Jed completed his PhD (Macquarie) in animal welfare regulation in 2015 and has taught Macquarie University’s Animal Law course on an annual basis since 2012. Jed’s research examines governance structures for animal welfare policy and investigates the performance of government in developing and administering animal welfare law. His research has contributed to providing an empirical and analytical basis for law reform proposals intended to create new animal welfare governance models in Australia, including through the establishment of independent statutory authorities for animal welfare at the state and federal level. Previously, Jed practised as a prosecutor for RSPCA South Australia, as a lawyer for a leading commercial law firm, and has worked as an inspector for RSPCA Queensland.

 

PROFESSOR CHRISTINE PARKER (Committee Member)

Professor Christine Parker is a Professor of Law at University of Melbourne, Australia where she teaches corporate social responsibility and business regulation, legal ethics, food law and policy, and animals and the law. She has previously held positions at Griffith University, University of New South Wales, the Australian National University and Monash University. She holds a BA (Hons) and LLB (Hons) from The University of Queensland and a PhD from the Australian National University.

Christine has a deep interest in both conceptualizing and communicating how law and regulation can help people, animals and businesses live more sustainably and well within our ecological, social and economic systems. Professor Parker has written, researched and consulted widely on how and why business comply with legal, social and environmental responsibilities, and what difference regulatory enforcement makes. Her books include The Open Corporation (2002) on corporate social responsibility, business compliance systems and democratic accountability of companies; Explaining Compliance (2011, with Vibeke Nielsen), an edited collection of the leading practice and policy oriented empirical research on how and why businesses do and do not comply with the law. She is also the co-author of Inside Lawyers’ Ethics, the influential textbook on lawyers’ professional conduct in social context.

Professor Parker’s current research focuses on the politics, ethics and regulation of food and sustainable food systems, and especially the use of animals in the food system. Her research on whether higher welfare labelling of animal food products makes any difference has been published in a range of law reviews.