I am a PhD candidate with Monash's department of Business Law and Taxation researching the supports offered to help balance work and caregiving in Australia's employment framework and how they may be improved to facilitate gender equal patterns of work and care. I'm also a Research Assistant in the department - working now on an Australian Research Council grant-funded project exploring labour dispute resolution in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, with my research relating mainly to the Philippines. I was also a sessional lecturer, preparing and delivering the online lectures for MGF2341 Managing Employee Relations with Monash's Department of Management in 2020-2021 and am currently tutoring BTX3991 Employment Law.

During my undergraduate degree at Monash Law, I was consistently involved in research projects including internships at the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and serving as a Research Mentor with the Centre for Undergraduate Research Initiatives and Excellence. I also completed several pieces of independent research, presented at the International Conference for Undergraduate Research (ICUR), published articles on legal academic blogs, authored an Honours Thesis and co-authored a submission to the ALRC. I feel truly privileged to be continuing this research journey now with so many excellent academics and look forward to furthering my research, problem-solving and critical thinking skills in a research, policy, consultancy or legal role in the future.

I am interested in questions of legal reform, especially in the field of labour law in Australia and South East Asia. My research questions are often directed towards improving access to justice, therapeutic jurisprudence and substantive equality. My research typically involves comparative and mixed methods approaches with a socio-legal and feminist approach. My research has involved both quantitative methods such as descriptive statistics and regression analyses using SPSS and qualitative methods such as interviews, media analyses and doctrinal analyses.

Australia's Regulatory Framework of Work/Care Supports and the Worker/Carer: A Gender Justice Perspective

While women's participation in Australia's workforce has seen steady increases, women continue to work on blatantly unequal terms. Women are more likely to work in part-time or casual roles, work fewer hours and feature disproportionately in lower-paying jobs and industries with much of these discrepancies arising due to women's disproportionate carer responsibilities. Nancy Fraser was among the first scholars to identify the need for gender equal patterns of care and its role in achieving gender equality in the workplace. In light of this, Fraser and others proposed that the only acceptable gender equal society would be that of a universal caregiving society where the worker/carer is treated as the norm. As such, this thesis explores the extent to which Australia's regulatory framework of work/care supports promotes a universal caregiving society by using an original theoretical framework inspired by Fraser's principles of gender justice. The thesis will feature a doctrinal analysis of Australia's present regulatory framework and empirical analyses to determine how the present regulatory framework may or may not be influencing the provision of work/care supports in workplaces. This will involve a quantitative analysis of the work/care supports offered in nearly 5000 Australian workplaces using SPSS and interviews with company representatives to illuminate how the present regulatory framework influences workplace decisions and their perceptions around the need for a universal caregiving society. These findings will offer contemporary insights as to the state of Australia's regulatory framework for work/care supports, highlight shortcomings and opportunities for reform, provide insight into the regulatory framework's influence on workplace practices and illuminate the drivers and barriers of corporate behaviour to inform how best to implement identified opportunities for reform.

Labour Dispute Resolution Processes in South East Asia (2021-present)

Offering research assistance for an Australian Research Council grant-funded project that will investigate the formal and informal mechanisms of collective labour dispute resolution in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The project involves a study of the laws and formal institutions that regulate collective labour disputes alongside interview-based research on dispute resolution experiences and the identification of informal norms and processes. This project aims to increase understanding of collective labour dispute resolution systems and the relationships between the formal and informal dimensions of these systems in the region.

Covid-19 and Australia's Tax Treatment of Childcare (2021-present)

Thiagarajah, L. and Selvarajah, A.

Covid-19 and the FBT Child Care Exemption: Examining the Restrictive Tax Ruling Defining 'Business Premises'. Accepted for publication in the Australian Tax Forum.

Thiagarajah, L. and Selvarajah, A.

Covid-19 and Childcare Expense Deductions: Revisiting the Decision in Lodge. Published in the Australian Tax Review and to be republished in Taxation Today.

Thiagarajah, L. and Selvarajah, A.

Childcare Tax Deduction: A Gender Just Response. Conference presentation at Monash University's Tax Symposium: Critical Junctures/Critical Perspectives - A Call for New Voices in Tax Reform.

This research explores the tax treatment of childcare in Australia. In particular, the history of childcare tax deductions both from a political and judicial perspective. With the judicial perspective, this research revisits past precedent, which found that childcare expenses should be excluded from being treated as a legitimate work-related expense. It also explores the potential for the introduction of a child care deduction by way of Parliament and considers the effectiveness of such a deduction in addressing Australia's child care crisis and consequently increasing women's workforce participation, which at present lags due to women's disproportionate caregiving responsibility and an economic framework that effectively penalises many secondary earners from working more than three days a week. The results of these findings are contextualised in light of new understandings on childcare and its role in enabling workforce participation and the increasing need for effective child care solutions as a result of Covid-19.

Digital Courts and Access to Justice (2019-present)

Denvir, C. and Selvarajah, A.

Safeguarding Access to Justice in the Age of the Online Court. Published in the Modern Law Review.

Balmer, N., Denvir, C., Grant, G., Pleasence, P. and Selvarajah, A.,

Online Courts and Capability: Implications for Access to Justice. In preparation for submission to the Melbourne University Law Review.

These articles are based on a project examining the impact of digital court infrastructure on access to justice and considers the support structures necessary to assist those at risk of digital exclusion. Drawing on quantitative analysis from the 2014/15 Legal Problem Resolution Survey (LPRS) data and new data collected by the Victoria Law Foundation in 2019 via a representative panel survey, this project considers issues at the intersection of digital and legal capability, integrating empirical analysis with analysis of the way in which digital capability has been defined within the jurisprudence of Australian and UK courts.

Public Understandings of the Law (2019-present)

Aglionby, G., Denvir, C., Marks, A. and Selvarajah, A.

Public Perceptions of Law and Law Reform: Findings from a Public Consultation Exercise. In preparation for submission to the Journal of Law and Society.

In 2010, the UK’s Coalition Government launched the ‘Your Ideas for Your Freedom’ consultation, inviting public input on the topics: 'Restoring Civil Liberties', 'Cutting Business and Third Sector Regulations' and 'Repealing Unnecessary Laws' to be translated into a ‘Freedom Bill’. Over a two month consultation period, 13,955 responses were submitted. The responses provide rich insight into the public’s relationship with the law. However, there has been no research using this open-access and freely available data to inform among other things: public knowledge of the law; the relationship between the news cycle and public perceptions of law, or; the extent to which public opinion shapes legislation. This multi-disciplinary project, undertaken with researchers from the UK (Computer Science, UCL) and the USA (Political Science, Wesleyan University) aims to produce the first exploration of the 'Your Freedom' data, drawing on techniques from Natural Language Processing for analysis of verbatim data.

Technology Risk and Regulation in the Digital Age (2021)

Offering research assistance in the development of a Monash University unit. Collected information about cybersecurity and data protection obligations in the EU, USA, and Australia; information about e-instruments and e-signatures including the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's conventions and model laws on the issue and Australia's relevant legislation; information on blockchain and its potential to be used to achieve regulatory objectives or requirements and the legality of smart contracts; and Australia's intellectual property regime.

Malaysia's COVID-19 Financial and Employment Regulation Responses (2020-21)

Prepared two reports on Malaysia's financial and employment regulation responses as a result of COVID-19. These reports were part of an international, comparative study of legal-economic responses to COVID-19 by the Young Scholars Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Association for Promotion of Political Economy and Law, the International University College of Turin and Bocconi University. The project involved a collaboration between young and senior scholars across the world to help shed light on the procedural, substantive and social dimensions of the regulatory responses to the pandemic, as they begin to affect a post-COVID19 world. Based on an expert developed questionnaire, the study provides a comprehensive map of reports that address levels of participation of constituencies in decision making, forms of exercising power and distribution of relief measures across society across several regulatory domains:

• State of Exception

• Surveillance and Compliance

• Legal-Financial Architecture

• Employee relief and protection of work

• Business relief and protection

• Alternatives

More than 120 young scholars from all regions of the world are currently working on this project.

Gender Research for Reforming the Fair Work Act (2020)

Offered research assistance for a project under the University of New South Wales's Australian Human Rights Institute, which included reviewing enterprise agreements for examples of gender discrimination and conducting literature reviews on areas for reform under the Fair Work Act to advance gender equality, discussions on how enterprise agreements and collective bargaining may entrench gender inequality and the effects of gendered language and stereotypes on women's workforce participation.

International Comparison of Debt Management Firm Regulation (2020)

Offered research assistance to prepare a literature review for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to measure the effectiveness of regulatory frameworks related to DMFs in other jurisdictions in addressing consumer harms.

The review had two overarching purposes:

1. Identify DMF regulatory frameworks in other jurisdictions (for example, licensing frameworks) and assess their efficacy in addressing consumer harms. Relevant jurisdictions may include the UK, Canada and the US, amongst others.

2. Undertake analysis of existing literature and qualitative and quantitative data in other jurisdictions to evaluate the effectiveness of key features included and required in a regulatory framework for DMFs. Such features include imposing conduct obligations, fit and proper persons tests, ban on unsolicited advertising, caps on fees and mandatory warnings.

The research was used in discussions with the Treasury department, which has since led to the announcement of a licensing regime for debt management firms.

Enhancing Corporate Accountability (2019-2020)

Offering research assistance for a grant-funded project on director accountability mechanisms. Collected information about prior studies that have been conducted that collected and examined data on criminal and civil enforcement actions taken against corporations and their directors for corporate wrongdoing to narrow the scope of the study. Focussed primarily on studies conducted since 2005 into criminal or civil enforcement actions against corporations and/or corporate officers for some sort of corporate wrongdoing, especially in Australia, the UK and Singapore but also enforcement in the EU and other parts of Asia. Having assisted in determining the scope of the study, I reviewed enforcement actions against directors in Malaysia by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) and private actors in the last 10 years.

The Risks and Human Rights Challenges of Transgender Women in Prisons (2019)

In March 2019, the UK opened its first ‘transgender unit’ in a women’s prison, separating three transgender inmates from the general population. This research explored the human rights ramifications of the decision and challenged the validity of its justifications. This research argues that the decision perpetuates harmful stereotypes about transgender women and could have a stifling effect on international efforts to rightly integrate transgender women into women’s prisons by drawing on statistical evidence and the firsthand experiences of transgender women.

The Practical and Therapeutic Jurisprudence Implications of the VLRC's Proposal to Provide an Independent Victim's Lawyer to 'Vulnerable Individuals' (2018)

In 2016, the Victorian Law Reform Commission recommended independent victims' lawyers for 'vulnerable individuals' to ameliorate the feelings of isolation and neglect experienced by many victims during the criminal trial process. However, this research argues that requiring victims to prove their 'vulnerability' to access this service would raise practical and therapeutic jurisprudence issues. While focused on this recommendation, this research serves as part of a broader conversation on victims' treatment in the criminal justice system, their role in criminal trials, vulnerability, the operation and therapeutic jurisprudence consequences of victim entitlements generally and the political and social biases surrounding 'deserving' victims. To do this, I drew on strands of critical and feminist theory, victimology studies and therapeutic jurisprudence literature. This research was conducted as part of Monash University's prestigious, select-entry Honours Thesis program under the supervision of Associate Professor Kate Seear.

Improving the Accessibility of the Family Law System for Disadvantaged Litigants (2018)

This research drew on interview responses to select discussion questions from the ALRC's 2019 Review of the Family Law System Discussion Paper that focused on the accessibility of the family law system for potentially disadvantaged litigants with a strong feminist focus. The interviews were conducted with interdisciplinary professionals such as lawyers, social workers, not-for-profit leaders and Judge Ron Curtain of the Federal Circuit Court of Australia. The responses were then distilled to provide concrete recommendations with reference to existing domestic and international solutions and evidence of their respective effectiveness to support the value of our recommendations. The submission was written as part of the Monash's Law Student Society's Just Leadership Program - Women's Rights Group, was shortlisted as best project of the program, showcased on the Monash Feminist Legal Studies' Group's blog, featured as a poster at Monash's Elimination of Violence Against Women Event 2018 and cited in the ALRC's Discussion Paper.

A Comparative Study of the British Crown's Legal Justifications for the Acquisition of Indigenous Rights (2018)

Drawing on comparative jurisprudence from the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand, this research focused on distilling the legal justifications for the British Crown's acquisition of sovereignty from Indigenous communities in each jurisdiction. The research highlights the hypocrisy and troubling biases of the legal reasonings in the most prominent judgments of each state to conclude that, while done to varying extents, each jurisdiction's justifications are problematically premised on either diminishing or altogether denying pre-existing Indigenous sovereignty.

'Neutrality' in Mediation (2017)

This research drew on feminist and therapeutic jurisprudence literature to argue that sometimes the fairest mediations may require a mediator to exercise a more interventionist approach to address the power imbalances that may arise from intersectional gender issues. Selected for publication in Australian Dispute Resolution Research Network's blog as the best in-class research project.

The Limited Value of Individualised Prosecutions in International Criminal Justice (2017)

My research examined the effectiveness of the international criminal trial process in achieving the objectives of international criminal justice as defined by Christoph Safferling by applying real-life examples and expert opinions. Having highlighted the pitfalls of the prosecutorial process, this research argued that the international criminal justice system should prioritise victim healing and community rebuilding, a feat that the current prosecutorial process does little to facilitate.

Strengthening the Rules of Evidence Admittance for Forensic Evidence (2016)

My research highlighted forensic evidence's unwarranted reputation of infallibility by drawing on Australian and American precedents where an overestimation of the reliability of forensic evidence resulted in false convictions and scientific studies that prove forensic evidence's weaknesses. I concluded that given forensic evidence's persuasive power, greater resources must be devoted to testing the reliability of forensic evidence before accepted in criminal trials and that there must be a stronger judicial gate-keeping process in forensic evidence admittance to prevent false convictions.

• 2022: Awarded the Phillipa Weeks prize by the Australian Labour Law Association (ALLA) and Federation Press for the best paper presented at ALLA’s 2022 biennial national Conference by an early career academic or research higher degree student for the paper entitled, “The Pitfalls in the Regulation of Paid Parental Leave for Gender Equal Parenting”.

• 2022: Awarded the Business Law and Taxation Faculty PhD Publication Award for the article, "Covid-19 and Childcare Expense Deductions: Revisiting the Decision in Lodge"

• 2021: Received a 99/100 weighted score and 92/100 raw student evaluation score (the highest band score) for the lectures conducted in MGF2341 Semester 2.

• 2021: Awarded the Unit Excellence Award for receiving the highest mark in the unit BEX6990 Research Strategies and Methods in Business Law as part of Monash University's Business Law and Taxation PhD program.

• 2020: Awarded a Higher-Level Pass for the unit LEGW8136 Employment and Industrial Practice as part of Australia National University’s Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice.

• 2020-2023: Awarded a Monash University Business Law and Taxation departmental PhD scholarship.

• 2018: Invited to the select-entry Monash University Faculty of Law Just Leadership Program under the Women's Rights team, a program designed for students with demonstrated leadership potential and interests in social justice to execute an original social justice initiative.

• 2018: Invited to the select-entry Monash University Faculty of Law Honours Thesis Cohort to author an original thesis on the basis of academic performance and a research proposal.

• 2017: Awarded the Maddocks High Achievers' Award by the Monash University Faculty of Law for being among the top 25 LLB averages at Monash University.

• 2014: Honour Roll Recipient in Sunway University's Canadian International Matriculation Program.

• 2014: Awarded the Jeffrey Cheah Entrance Scholarship at Sunway University's Canadian International Matriculation Program.