Accountability, Oversight, and Review of Anti-Terrorism Legislation
Dr. Jessie Blackbourn examines anti-terrorism laws in Australia, Canada, and the U.K., and specifically, oversight, review, and accountability of those laws.
Dr. Jessie Blackbourn is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and Socio-Legal Research Fellow at Wolfson College. She has a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast and an LLM from Birkbeck College, University of London. She has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales, and as a Lecturer at Kingston University and the University of Salford.
Jessie’s research focuses on anti-terrorism laws in Australia, Canada, and the U.K., with a particular focus on the oversight, review, and accountability of those laws. As such, engagement with, and participation in, reviews of anti-terrorism laws is a key part of the research. To achieve this, Jessie has helped to organise two impact and engagement events designed to facilitate dialogue between academics, legal professionals and civil society practitioners in law reform processes.
On 4 July 2017, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies hosted an invite-only academic practitioner workshop on anti-terrorism law reform, funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account. The workshop provided a basis for UK academics, legal professionals and civil society practitioners to discuss their expertise on UK anti-terrorism laws with the Australian Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and to engage in dialogue about anti-terrorism law reform practices and processes in Australia and the UK. A short report of the workshop was published on the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies’ website.
Following the success of the first workshop, a second event – an expert roundtable on citizenship revocation – was hosted by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law on 10 May 2019. It was convened by Dr. Lawrence McNamara and Dr. Jessie Blackbourn and was supported by the University of York Law School and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. The expert roundtable again involved participants from UK academia, the legal profession and civil society in dialogue with the Australian Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. A report of the roundtable has been published on the website of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor.
Both knowledge exchange events were designed to provide UK academics with the opportunity to share their research expertise with law reform practitioners in Australia and the UK and to develop strong networks both within and beyond academia.