Dr Laura Smith-Khan
Senior Lecturer in Law - Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law; School of Law
Biography
Dr Laura Smith-Khan SFHEA is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of New England. She was previously a Chancellor’s Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney (2019-24). In 2023 she was a visiting researcher at the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR), Ghent University, Belgium, and later became CESSMIR’s first external affiliated member. Dr Smith-Khan’s research examines marginalized groups’ inclusion in the law and seeks to address inequality.
Her current migrant legal capability research explores how Australian government and non-government organizations navigate linguistic and cultural diversity in the provision of legal information and advice for recent arrivals to Australia. Her award-winning Fellowship project at UTS explored how legal assistance affects participation in migration procedures and examined the education experiences of those studying Migration Law and Practice. With a strong focus on engagement and impact, this work led to the development of targeted learning resources to improve prospective migration practitioners’ educational outcomes and professional and intercultural communication skills and practices. She has also shared the project findings in consulation with the Department of Home Affairs.
Dr Smith-Khan was the 2022 recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities. She is co-founder of the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Research Network, with members from over 44 countries, and is a core member of the Language on the Move research group. Through these networks and her research, Dr Smith-Khan aims to ensure that linguistic and interdisciplinary scholarship reaches legal sector audiences in accessible formats to improve participation for minoritized people. To this end, she has presented her research to government inquiries and reviews; migration judges and tribunal members; community legal centres; and lawyer and migration practitioner professional associations. Her expertise is recognized and cited widely and internationally, including in EU-level guidance for asylum judges, and in Australian Human Rights Commission advocacy.
Dr Smith-Khan’s doctoral research, in both Law and Linguistics, explored language and credibility assessment in Australian asylum procedures and public discourse. This continues to be a central strand of her research. Before her PhD, she was full-time research assistant on a project examining disability in forced migration, in refugee camps and urban settings across six countries. With Chief Investigators from the University of Sydney Law School, she has shared this research at the United Nations, through a consultancy with UNESCO, at international conferences, with government agencies, and in published reports, peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and culminating in a groundbreaking 2017 book.
Dr Smith-Khan has been admitted as a lawyer in NSW and has assisted refugees and asylum seekers in paralegal and pro-bono roles. She has worked at four Australian universities and has proficiency in several languages. She serves as an Australian Research Council detailed assessor and is the incoming (June 2026) Co-Editor in Chief of the Australian Journal of Human Rights (UNSW). Dr Smith-Khan serves on the editorial board of Multilingua, a Q1 journal on multilingualism and intercultural communication, and regularly reviews articles, book proposals and manuscripts across her fields. She is a prolific public communicator, having published around 50 non-traditional research outputs, running a research website, and sharing regular micro-blogs with large followings on social media.
