Research Unit for the Study of Society, Law and Religion

Management Board

Director

Paul Babie, University of Adelaide, Law School

Paul is an active and widely published researcher, working mainly on law and religion, especially the intersection of private property theory and Christian theology and the nature of religious law. He is currently writing a book for UBC Press in Canada which draws together his research interests entitled Private Property, Climate Change and the Children of Abraham. He is an expert in the history of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Australia and the canon law of the Eparchy for Ukrainian Catholics for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania; he regularly consults on these matters. In 2004, Paul was ordained a Priest of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, in which capacity he currently holds several positions: Chair of the Eparchial Statutes Review and Canon Law Committee and Canon Law Adviser to the Eparch; Consultor and Secretary of the College of Eparchial Consultors and the Eparchial Presbyteral Council; Legal Member of the Eparchial Financial Committee; Canon Law Advisor, Chief Constitutional Draftsperson, and Eparchial Representative to the Eastern Catholic Bishops Forum of Australia; and, Member of the Eparchial Liturgical Committee.

Assistant Director

Nigel Wilson, Barrister, Bar Chambers, Adelaide

Nigel Wilson is a practising barrister at Bar Chambers in Adelaide, South Australia where he practises in all areas of commercial and civil litigation. He is the Assistant Director of RUSSLR.

Nigel is also the Course Co-ordinator of two subjects, Negligence and Intentional Wrongs and Technology, Law and Society, in the Master of Laws programme at the University of Adelaide Law School. He is the Chair of the International Workshop on e-Forensics Law which is part of the e-Forensics 2009 Conference and is Special Counsel (Legal and Regulatory) to the Convergent Communications Research Group at the University of Adelaide. His research interests relevant to RUSSLR’s activities, about which he has published and spoken at local, national and international conferences and/ or is currently undertaking research, include:

Regulating the Information Age - How will we cope with technological change?
Human Rights and the Right to Privacy
The Workplace of the Future
Privacy and the Rise of Confucianism in China
Digital Forensics and Evidence
Customs, spirituality and religious communications
Identity, privacy and data-mining
Tort Law – The Role of Pragmatism, Policy and Principle in the Duty of Care
Consumer Protection for Remote and Vulnerable Communities
Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility
Estoppel, Equity and Unconscionability
Insurance Law, Professional Liability Law and Legal Ethics
Protecting Trust and Security Technologies
Principles-based and Risk-based Regulation
Takaful – Insurance from an Islamic perspective
The Law of Virtual Worlds and Social Networks
Digital Divides – Bridging the Gaps and Fostering Digital Opportunity

Members

Caroyln Evans, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, School of law
Associate Professor Carolyn Evans is Associate Dean (Research) of the Melbourne Law School and a Deputy Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. Her teaching and research are in the areas of constitutional law, human rights and religious freedom. Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar and where she held a stipendiary lectureship for two years. She also qualified to practice law and is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria. 

Carolyn is the author of Religious Freedom under the European Court of Human Rights (OUP 2001) and co-author of Australian Bills of Rights: The Law of the Victorian Charter and the ACT Human Rights Act (LexisNexis 2008). She is co-editor of Religion and International Law (1999, Kluwer) and Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region (2006 Martinus Nijhoff). She is an internationally recognised expert on religious freedom and the relationship between law and religion and has spoken on these topics in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Greece, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong and Australia. From 2007-2009 she is undertaking a joint ARC Discovery Project with Beth Gaze on the topic of religious freedom and non-discrimination. She also researches on the area of domestic protection of human rights, particularly the role of parliament in the protection of human rights and Commonwealth Bills of Rights. She is currently completing an ARC Discovery Grant on this topic with Associate Professor Simon Evans. Papers from the project can be found on the website of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies.

Samer Akkach, Associate Professor, University of Adelaide, School of Architecture
Samer Akkach is Reader in architectural history and theory at the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Easter Architecture at The University of Adelaide, Australia. He is an intellectual historian and architectural theoretician with expertise in Islamic religion and culture and in Islamic art and architecture. He has a special interest in Islamic cosmology in the pre- and post-Copernican periods. For several years he has been working on the religious, socio-urban and intellectual histories of Damascus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the life and works of an eminent figure of the city, ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. His recent major works include The Correspondence of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731) (forthcoming, Brill 2009), ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007), Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005), and the “The Poetics of Concealment: al-Nabulusi’s Encounter with the Dome of the Rock,” Muqarnas 22 (November 2005), 110-127. He is the editor of De-Placing Difference: Architecture, Culture and Imaginative Geography, (Adelaide: CAMEA, 2002, 2nd ed. 2006), and Self, Place and Imagination: Cross-Cultural Thinking in Architecture (Adelaide: CAMEA, 1999, 2nd ed. 2001). Samer has lectured widely in the Middle East, Europe, North America, Canada, South East Asia, China and Australia, held visiting research fellowship at MIT, and is currently the leading Chief Investigator on a large research project funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), Islam, Modernity and the Enlightenment: A New Perspective (2006-2008).

Stephen Downs, Head, Flinders University, School of Theology

Peter Burdon, RUSSLR Research Assistant, LLM Candidate: Law School
Peter is currently completing his LLM at the University of Adelaide and has a strong reserach interest in property, environmental, minerals and energy and native title law. His research interests also include the role of spiritual wisdom in helping our current environmental crisis and an emerging area of law called Earth Jurisprudence.