Dean of Law
Professor Luke McNamara
Professor McNamara was appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Wollongong in May 2007. For more than 14 years prior to his current appointment he taught in the Faculty of Law’s LLB degree program, specialising in the field of criminal law, human rights law and Indigenous peoples and the law. He has previously served as Sub-Dean, Head of Postgraduate Studies and Chair of the Faculty’s Research Committee.
Professor McNamara's primary research interests are in the fields of human rights, criminal law and justice administration, and cultural diversity and the law. He has conducted research, in Australia and Canada, on the land and autonomy rights of Indigenous peoples, the regulation of racial vilification and hate speech, and the involvement of Indigenous people in criminal justice decision-making processes. In 2006 he completed a four country comparative study (Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom) of the significance of domestic legal arrangements for the protection of human rights for the resolution of a number of recent controversies: double jeopardy reform, the legal recognition of same-sex relationships, and the operation of hate speech laws.
Professor McNamara is the author of Human Rights Controversies: The Impact of Legal Form (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007) and Regulating Racism: Racial Vilification Laws in Australia (Sydney Institute of Criminology, 2002); and a co-author of Criminal Laws: Materials and Commentary on Criminal Law and Process of New South Wales (Federations Press, 4th edition, 2006) (with Brown, Farrier, Egger & Steel) and Indigenous Legal Issues (Law Book Company, 3rd ed, 2003) (with McRae, Nettheim & Beacroft).
Professor Luke McNamara holds Bachelors degree in Arts (History) and Law, a Master of Laws degree from the University of Manitoba in Canada and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Wollongong.
Since 2003 Professor McNamara has been a Legal Adviser to the NSW Parliament's Legislation Review Committee, and in 2005 he served as a member of the NSW Attorney General's Working Party on Serious Vilification. Professor McNamara has previously served as a member of the Management Committee of the Illawarra Legal Centre and the Board of Directors of Illawarra Children’s Services.
Professor McNamara is a member of the Editorial Board for the journals, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, and Law Text Culture, and is a member of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, the Canadian Law and Society Association and the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand. In 2004 Professor McNamara was a Visiting Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway.
Publications on RIS
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