Miranda Forsyth is an Associate Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) in the College of Asia and Pacific at ANU. Prior to coming to ANU, Miranda was a senior lecturer in criminal law at the law school of the University of the South Pacific, based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Miranda is the author of A Bird that Flies with Two Wings: Kastom and State Justice Systems in Vanuatu (2009) ANU ePress and co-author of W_eaving Intellectual Property Policy in Small island Developing States_, Intersentia 2015.

The central analytical question animating Miranda’s scholarship is: How can people’s diverse justice needs be best met in contexts of multiple legal and normative orders? Her geographical focus has been primarily in the Pacific Islands region, particularly Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. She has investigated this central question through a number of different projects, including the relationships between state and kastom justice in Vanuatu; a pluralistic approach to the regulation of intellectual property in the Pacific Islands; the potential of restorative justice for the region; the promise and challenges of community rule-making; and overcoming sorcery accusation related violence in Papua New Guinea. Miranda draws creatively upon theories and methodological approaches from the disciplines of law, anthropology and criminology to address these questions, working in close partnerships with Pacific islands researchers and research institutions.

Research interests

• Legal pluralism
• Law and society
• Legal anthropology
• Restorative justice
• Crime and violence
• Government and politics of Asia and the Pacific
• Intellectual property law