RegNet's Honorary Professor Fiona Haines awarded Law and Society Association Prize

Fiona Haines, Honorary Professor at RegNet and Professor of Criminology at the University of Melbourne, has been awarded the Law and Society Association International Prize for significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the field of law and society.

The Committee recommended the prize be awarded to Fiona in recognition of her extensive body of scholarly work in the fields of regulation, corporate crime, disasters, and climate change with particular attention to its international focus and import.

Professor Haines is a very distinguished, accomplished, generous and productive scholar as well as a mentor, and active citizen in law and society. One of her referees notes: ‘Professor Haines is a leading voice, if not ‘the’ leading voice in regulatory studies. … Her work is theoretically rich, methodologically meticulous and, importantly, always attentive to the global context in which it is situated’. Another concludes: ‘Professor Haines transcends the scholarship on disaster that would argue that state regulation is often symbolic with little will behind it to actually address problems. She explains how and where law includes both instrumental and symbolic elements, and also explains that actors can take what might have seemed to be ineffectual elements in the law and mobilize symbolism to make law more effective’.

The Committee agreed that these are compelling testaments to Professor Fiona Haines many distinguished achievements in the advancement of knowledge in the field of law and society.

Fiona Haines is Professor of Criminology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Adjunct Professor at the Regulatory Institutions Network at ANU and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Her research, which encompasses work on industrial disasters, grievances and multinational enterprises, centres on white collar and corporate crime, globalisation and regulation.