Desmond Manderson FRSC, FAAL, FASSA is jointly appointed in the ANU Colleges of Law and of Arts & Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He directs the Network for Law, Arts and the Humanities, designing innovative interdisciplinary courses with English, philosophy, art theory and history, political theory, and beyond. His work has led to essays, books, and lectures around the world in the fields of English literature, philosophy, ethics, history, cultural studies, music, human geography, and anthropology, as well as in law and legal theory. Throughout this work Manderson has articulated a vision in which law's connection to these humanist disciplines is critical to its functioning, its justice, and its social relevance. His many books include From Mr Sin to Mr Big (1993); Songs Without Music (2000); Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law (2012). Recent work pioneers the intersection of law and the visual arts, notably in Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts (2019). His latest play, Twenty Minutes with the Devil (with Luis Gomez Romero) is a black comedy thriller set against the devastation of the global drug wars. It premiered at The Street Theatre in 2022.

BA (Hons) LLB (Hons) (ANU), DCL (McGill), FRSC

I undertake research across interdisciplinary studies in law and the humanities.  I have been instrumental in developing a more sophisticated and ambitious conversation about law and culture, with a particular focus on questions of authority and legitimacy; justice, law and ethics; rules, interpretations, and judgment. And I have been in the forefront of expanding the field’s objects of study to encompass music, art, and popular culture. These interdisciplinary connections offer new imagination and insights into our thinking about law and justice.

Through this framework I have researched in a very wide variety of areas, including drug policy, music history, children’s literature, popular culture, animals, the ‘war on terror,’ tort law, refugees, and Indigenous peoples; and my theoretical work including articles on Derrida, Bourdieu, Butler, Foucault, Levinas, and Bakhtin has contributed to legal and social theory, legal education, aesthetics, ethical philosophy and legal history.  My research uses detailed interdisciplinary case studies that often bring together surprising elements—a story, a legal problem, and a theoretical perspective, for example—in order to show how each facet illuminates the others. This scholarship has been pioneering both in its influence and in its restlessness. Yet beneath its diversity my work has consistently built new bridges and opened new dialogues in three dimensions: across disciplines; between critical theory and law; and with the wider community.

My current research interests include the colonial and postcolonial legal imaginary, time, space and law, legal theory, legal discourse, and - in a surprising detour - drug policy and history in Australia and globally.