Dr Laura Smith-Khan

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Law. Before joining UNE, I was a Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). In 2023 I was a visiting researcher at Ghent University (Belgium) and in 2024, I became the first ever external affiliated member of Ghent’s Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR). My research examines the inclusion and participation of minoritized groups in legal settings, especially migration processes, and seeks to address inequality. My award-winning Fellowship project explored registered migration agents’ and lawyers’ roles in these processes. I was the 2022 recipient of the Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities.

I am the co-founder and co-convenor of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers’ Network. Through the network and my research, I aim to ensure that linguistic and interdisciplinary scholarship reaches legal sector audiences in accessible formats to improve participation for linguistic minorities. To this end, I have presented my research to government inquiries and reviews; refugee and migration judges and tribunal members; community legal centres; and barrister and migration practitioner associations. My expertise is recognized and cited widely and internationally, including in EU-level guidance for asylum decision-makers.

My doctoral research, with supervision in both Law and Linguistics, explored language and credibility assessment in Australian asylum procedures and public discourse. Prior to this, I was a full-time research assistant on a project examining disability in forced migration, in refugee camps and urban refugee settings across six countries. With Chief Investigators from the Sydney Centre for International Law, University of Sydney, I have shared the project findings at the United Nations, with UNESCO, at international conferences, with government agencies, and in published reports, peer-reviewed articles, and book chapters, culminating in a pioneering book.

I have been admitted as a lawyer in the NSW Supreme Court and assisted refugees and asylum seekers in paralegal and pro-bono roles. I have worked at multiple universities in both law and linguistics, and I speak several languages with varying degrees of fluency.