Associate Professor Senthorun Raj

Meet Associate Professor Senthorun Raj, a visiting fellow from Manchester Law School at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he specialises in human rights law. Although he is based in the United Kingdom, he was raised in Sydney and describes returning for his visiting fellowship as “coming home.”

Senthorun’s work explores how law shapes the lives of queer and trans communities and how scholars can approach these questions with curiosity and care. We caught up with Sen to hear more about his background, what brings him back to UNSW, and how he plans to spend his time with the School of Global and Public Law.

What attracted you to spend your fellowship with our faculty?

UNSW Law & Justice has a dynamic community of scholars who use critical and creative methods to rethink how law works. Many are involved in critical judgment projects, reimagining cases from fresh perspectives. As a co-convenor of the Queer Judgments Project, I am looking forward to building new conversations and collaborations in this space during my fellowship.

How long will you be with us, and what are you hoping to focus on during your time here?

I will be based at UNSW Law & Justice for about three months throughout the year, spread over two different visits. In my first visit, I will be undertaking some critical research into emerging facial recognition technologies and how they might be utilised against queer and trans people who are seeking asylum. In my second visit, I will be teaching an intensive Law, Gender and Sexuality course with a focus on feminist and queer judgment writing.

Can you tell us about your current research project or the work you’re most excited about right now?

My current research emerges at the intersections of artificial intelligence, affect studies, asylum law, and creative writing. Building on my work around queer judgment writing (where I explore how we can re-imagine and re-create cases relating to LGBTIQA+ people), I will be conducting a thought experiment on how facial recognition technologies that purport to predict a person’s gender, sexuality, and emotional state risk creating a “legal nightmare” for queer and trans people who seek asylum. This research project involves a blend of traditional doctrinal research with more experimental forms of legal storytelling.

What questions or issues drive your research?

My research is animated by an ethical commitment to improving the lives of queer and trans people by attending to the ways in which law impacts upon their lives. I am interested in taking socio-legal, critical, and creative approaches to understanding how justice, freedom, and community can be realised for queer and trans people.

How does your work connect with broader themes in law, justice or policy?

My interdisciplinary legal scholarship explores how we can use rights tactically to improve the lives of minoritised people while also remaining critical about our fixations with law to resolve systemic issues of inequality, violence, and discrimination.

Are you working with any UNSW researchers, centres, or programs during your visit?

My visit is hosted by Professor Lucas Lixinski who is a collaborator on the Queer Judgments Project. As part of my new research project, I will also be meeting with colleagues from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and the Face & Forensic Psychology Research Lab.

What kinds of conversations or collaborations are you hoping to spark while you're here?

Given the interdisciplinary nature of my research on asylum law and creative legal scholarship, I am curious to speak with scholars who are undertaking important work in refugee law and technology, such as Professor Daniel Ghezelbash. The great thing about conversations when you are navigating a new field of research is that it can cultivate collaborations that were unexpected. I am hoping for some surprising and fruitful connections while I am here.

What real-world impact do you hope your work will have?

I hope my work speaks to directly affected LGBTIQA+ people who are seeking justice in times of increasing authoritarianism as well as to scholars, policymakers and activists more generally who are navigating legal rights and reform issues affecting LGBTIQA+ people.

What’s something you think the Australian legal community should be paying more attention to right now?

We need to be vigilant about the increasing authoritarian practices of supposedly liberal governments, even in Australia. We are witnessing censorship of critical research that foregrounds gender, sexuality, colonialism and race. Some state governments here in Australia are degrading trans and non-binary people by removing their healthcare.

In despairing times, though, we should also focus on sustained local organising that results in crucial legal victories. A recent example of this is the passage of legislation in Victoria to better protect the bodily autonomy of intersex infants and proscribe unnecessary medical interventions to “normalise” a child’s body prior to their ability to consent to such procedures.

What’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?

Some people imagine legal scholars as dry, dispassionate and/or uninteresting people. For many of the legal scholars I know, this is far from the case. Rather than subscribe to such a stereotype, I literally bring glitter into my work and showcase how legal research can sparkle.