• Practice and theory of international law
• Global human rights
• Law and society
• Transnational law
• Legal and cultural anthropology
• Postcolonial studies

Dr Emma Nyhan is a Research Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet). Before joining RegNet, Emma was a Research Fellow on the Australian Research Council-funded project ‘The Potential and Limits of International Adjudication’, led by Professors Hilary Charlesworth and Margaret Young at Melbourne Law School. Emma also taught Global Human Rights Law at the University of Melbourne.

Emma is an interdisciplinary scholar of law and society, whose work bridges international law, legal and social anthropology, and post-colonial studies. Specifically, her research is an in situ study of practices, procedures, institutions and concepts within and across normative legal orders. Her research contributes to the field of socio-legal studies of international law and global governance, global human rights, and transnational legal phenomena.

Emma’s research has been published in the European Journal of International Law, the International Journal of Law in Context, the Journal of International Dispute Settlement, and Melbourne Journal of International Law. Her research has been supported by the Council for British Research in the Levant, Melbourne Law School, the Socio-Legal Studies Association, and the Transnational Law Institute at King’s College London.

Prior to teaching at the University of Melbourne, Emma taught at the European University Institute, the University of Florence and the University of Leiden.

Emma has a PhD and a Master of Laws in Comparative, European and International Laws from the European University Institute, Italy. She holds a Master of Laws in Private Law from Universität Konstanz, Germany. She has a Bachelor of Laws (and German language as a minor) from University College Cork, Ireland. Emma is a qualified barrister at the Bar of Ireland.

Emma spent a number of years engaged in law and research centres in Europe, the Middle East and North America.