2021 Conversations - connection and disconnection (Webinar 2: The regulatory state across terrains of governance)

Presented by ANU College of Asia & the Pacific

This is the second webinar in the 2021 Conversations - connection and disconnection webinar series.

Webinar 2 - The regulatory state across terrains of governance

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many states have enacted large-scale welfare programs that have also expanded their regulatory reach. While the 'regulatory welfare state' literature helps to make sense of these transformations, it has yet to address key concerns, such as diminished accountability and transparency in social policymaking, experiences of welfare conditionality, growing reliance on digital surveillance, interlocking inequalities, and the securitisation of mobility. This panel attends to domains of the regulatory state often understood as disconnected: welfare, development, and migration. It sheds light on how current understandings of the regulatory welfare state would benefit from building stronger connections with other interdisciplinary fields.

Speakers:

PhD Scholar Anna Fieldhouse commenced her PhD at RegNet in February 2020, with the support of a Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Scholarship.Anna has been a social policy director in the Department of Social Services since 2016, after many years working for government and non-government welfare services in the homelessness, domestic violence, mental health and disability sectors. Anna's more recent focus has been on regulatory systems for welfare services, in particular developing the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Quality and Safeguards Commission which was established in 2018.

(Facilitator) Professor Kathryn (Kate) Henne is the Director of RegNet and an Honorary Professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. Before commencing as RegNet's Director, she held a Canada Research Chair at the University of Waterloo, where she was a Fellow of the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Her research interests are concerned with how science and technology contribute to the governance of persons and populations, with the aim of supporting more equitable regulatory approaches. Her current work examines digital trends, as well as their effects, in areas of policing and social assistance.

PhD Scholar Walter Johnson joined RegNet in 2021 to investigate how regulatory systems are shaping, and being shaped by, emerging neurotechnologies. Walter's research examines the ethical, social, and legal dimensions of a variety of current and emerging technologies with the overarching goal of promoting health, safety, and equity. His work has covered topics from heritable human genome editing to quantum computing. Before commencing PhD studies at RegNet, Walter was a research fellow for Associate Dean Diana Bowman at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he conducted research on governance for mitochondrial donation and smart cities. He holds a Juris Doctor (JD), Master's in science policy, and a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from Arizona State University.

Professor Veronica Taylor is an international lawyer and socio-legal scholar. Her work centres on regulatory intermediation and institutional reform. Within international law and justice norm-making, she analyzes the people and institutions that animate rule of law as foreign policy, commercial activity and a professional practice. Within the field of Asian and Comparative law, her work on Japan and Indonesia includes empirical and comparative studies of contracts, competition and corporate governance. Her current work focuses on the actors shaping legal pluralism in the Philippines; the ways in which regulation and law are made in Myanmar; and how to improve Indonesia's research competitiveness. She has written and consulted extensively on legal education reform and the regulation of the legal profession in Asia. Her work draws on more than 30 years' professional experience as a designer and implementer of legal reform for international and bilateral aid programmes in 15 countries.

Dr Anthea Vogl joined the UTS Faculty of Law in 2016. Her research takes a critical, interdisciplinary approach to the regulation of migrants and non-citizens, with a particular focus on the social and legal categories of the refugee and irregular migrant. Her areas of expertise are migration and refugee law, administrative law and legal theory. For the last four years, she has worked between Australia and Canada on qualitative research into refugee narratives and the oral hearing within onshore refugee status determination processes in both countries. Anthea has published in local and international journals and worked as a research associate on nationally and internationally funded competitive research grants. She is admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW. Prior to joining the Faculty, she practised in family law, and in refugee and migrant advocacy in Australian community legal centres and in Canada.