Staff Profiles

John Chesterman Phone: 8344 7944 Email: jhc@unimelb.edu.au Office: Medley Building Room 438

Background

John Chesterman completed degrees in Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne before completing a PhD here in 1995. He subsequently spent three years as a Research Fellow at the University's Centre for Public Policy, before moving to Townsville for two years to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at James Cook University's School of Indigenous Australian Studies. John returned to the University of Melbourne in 2000 to take up a lectureship in the Department.

Research

John's research interests cover the following areas: citizenship, rights, Indigenous political and legal affairs, Australian politics, and the Australian legal system.

Subjects Taught

• 1st year: Australian Politics
• 2nd/3rd year: Parliamentary Internship
• 4th/5th year Rights and Public Policy

Supervision

John is interested in supervising honours and postgraduate students in any of the following areas:

• Rights
• Citizenship
• Australian Indigenous political and legal affairs
• Access to the law
• Third sector (community) organisations
• Judicial politics
• Victorian State politics and Australian politics

Recent Main Publications

Books

Civil Rights: How Indigenous Australians Won Formal Equality (University of Queensland Press, 2005).

(co-editor with David Philips), Selective Democracy: Race, Gender and the Australian Vote (Circa, 2003).

(co-editor with Brian Galligan), Defining Australian Citizenship: Selected Documents (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999).

(with Brian Galligan), Citizens Without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Poverty Law and Social Change: The Story of the Fitzroy Legal Service (Melbourne University Press, 1996).

Recent Book Chapters

‘“An Unheard of Piece of Savagery”: Indigenous Australians and the Federal Vote’, in Chesterman and Philips (eds), Selective Democracy: Race, Gender and the Australian Vote (Circa, 2003).

Recent Journal Articles

‘“Chosen by the People?”: How Federal Parliamentary Seats Might be Reserved for Indigenous Australians Without Changing the Constitution’, Federal Law Review, vol. 34 (2006), pp. 261-285.

(with Heather Douglas) ‘“Their Ultimate Absorption”: Assimilation in 1930s Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 81 (2004), pp. 47-58.