Emeritus Professor Bronwyn Naylor

Bronwyn Naylor is Professor of Law in the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University, with honours degrees in Arts and Law and a Master of Laws from Monash University (BA/LLM), and a Master of Philosophy and Doctorate in Criminology from Cambridge University, UK. She worked in private legal practice, and at the Law Reform Commission of Victoria, before taking up an academic position at Monash University in the Law Faculty. She moved to the Graduate School of Business and Law at RMIT University in 2016.

In 2022 Bronwyn was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to tertiary education and the law.

Bronwyn teaches and researches in criminal law and criminal justice, human rights, law and gender, and social justice. Her research includes doctrinal, socio-legal and criminological work, and she collaborates in a range of interdisciplinary research teams.

An ongoing research project addresses the obligation to protect the human rights of people deprived of liberty in any form of detention, and the importance of effective implementation of the recently-ratified United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT). Dr Naylor is an appointed member of the OPCAT Advisory Group, the civil society advisory group to the Commonwealth Ombudsman as Australia's NPM Coordinator. She was also a Member of the OPCAT Advisory Group to the Victorian Ombudsman (December 2018-September 2019). Dr Naylor co-founded the Australia OPCAT Network in 2016 and continues as a contributor to the Network, working with civil society, academics, oversight entities and others supporting OPCAT's effective implementation in Australia.

Bronwyn also has ongoing research projects on the implications for the rehabilitation of offenders of the routinized use of criminal record checks as a form of risk management by employers. A focus of this research has been the impact of criminal record checking on the employment and greater civic engagement of Aboriginal communities. She currently holds a three-year grant from the Victorian Legal Services Board, 'Reducing barriers to employment for Aboriginal people: rethinking the role of criminal record checks', with RMIT colleagues and Aboriginal organisations Woor-Dungin, VACCHO and Winda Mara.

Other current or recent projects include a gender critique of defences to homicide, particularly in the context of family violence; reforms addressing the incarceration of women; the scope for restorative justice avenues for victims of sexual assault; and international responses to deaths in custody. Bronwyn has been a Chief Investigator in several major grant-funded projects in these and other fields, and has consulted to the Victorian Law Reform Commission on a range of criminal law reforms.

Bronwyn published Australian Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (OUP 2004) with Bernadette McSherry, and is a co-author of Waller and Williams Criminal Law Text and Cases (14th ed., 2020). She is co-editor of Human Rights in Closed Environments (Federation Press, 2014) with Julie Debeljak and Anita MacKay, and of Corporal Punishment of Children: Comparative Legal and Social Developments towards Prohibition and Beyond (Brill, 2018) with Bernadette Saunders and Pernilla Leviner. She is also co-editor of the Australian Journal of Human Rights Special Issue on the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (April 2019). She has an extensive range of published articles and book chapters, access details for which are provided below.

Bronwyn has extensive practical experience in research ethics and governance, and was Associate Chair of the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee 2008-2014. She is currently a member of the Human Research Ethics Committee in the College of Business and Law at RMIT. She currently supervises doctoral research on projects including wrongful convictions; sentencing practices; conditions of youth detention; rights of children with disabilities; the incarceration of First Nations women; and the international prosecution of business people for war crimes.

Bronwyn is a Director of VACRO (the Victorian Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders) and is National Co-Editor of the Alternative Law Journal. She was an appointed Member of the Admissions Committee, Legal Services Council 2017-2020.

Research interests

• Criminal Law
• Criminal Justice
• Human Rights
• Prisons
• Law, Gender and Feminism

• BA(Hons)LLB(Hons); LLM Monash University, Melbourne
• MPhil(Criminology) Cambridge University, UK
• PhD Cambridge University UK

Associations

• Barrister and Solicitor, Supreme Court of Victoria and High Court of Australia
• Member, Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology
• Member, European Society of Criminology
• Member, British Society of Criminology (International Ambassador)
• Member, Socio-Legal Studies Association
• Member, International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law
• Member, Law and Society Association