Visiting Doctoral Fellow, 2010 | Department of Philosophy

PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University

Joanne’s dissertation, currently entitled “Political Obligation and the Civil Dead”, examines the obligations of the disenfranchised to the state. Drawing from Hart’s theory of fair play, she posits that fairness entails a balance between the distribution of political benefits and burdens as well as a balance between the members of the polity themselves. If this is the case, then the question arises as to where the additional political obligations of the disenfranchised come from. Using various historical and contemporary cases of civil death, Joanne’s dissertation is an attempt to reconcile the absence of political benefits for disenfranchised groups with their obligations to the state in which they reside.

Joanne has presented various papers on issues of child enfranchisement, personal identity, legal ethics and civil disobedience at several conferences, including those of the American Political Science Association and Australasian Association of Philosophy. She has published a chapter and case study on engineering ethics. Her broader interests include the ethics of migration, human rights, business and professional ethics and constitutional law. She has taught courses in critical reasoning, legal theory, and race and gender issues.

After receiving her BA (Hons) in Philosophy and LLB from Monash University, Joanne was admitted to legal practice in 2005. She also holds a MA in Philosophy from Western Michigan University, where she was awarded a Graduate Research and Creative Scholar prize in 2007, and a LLM from Monash University, where she received the Monash University Law School award for her work in Children’s Rights in International and Domestic Law.