Miranda Forsyth is a Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) in the College of Asia and Pacific at ANU. Prior to coming to ANU, she 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 Weaving Intellectual Property Policy in Small island Developing States, Intersentia 2015.

The central analytical question animating Miranda’s scholarship is how people’s diverse justice needs can best be 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. Previous projects include the relationships between state and customary justice in Vanuatu and a pluralistic approach to the regulation of intellectual property in the Pacific Islands.

Current research projects focussing on the Pacific include the potential of Restorative Justice for the Pacific islands region, particularly in relation to gender based violence; the promise and challenges of Community Rule-Making as regulatory innovation; and a multi-year project on overcoming sorcery accusation related violence in Papua New Guinea. Miranda is also working on the development of a new agenda for Environmental Restorative Justice in both Australia and internationally.

Miranda draws creatively upon theories and methodological approaches from the disciplines of law, anthropology and criminology to interrogate these issues, 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