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Doctor

Christina (preferred name Nina) Hudson

(she/her)

Senior Research Fellow TLRI

Tasmanian Law Reform Institute

Orcid identifier0000-0003-4073-6963
  • Senior Research Fellow TLRI
    Tasmanian Law Reform Institute
  • +613 6226 2860 (Work)
  • +613 62267623 (Fax)
  • Faculty of Law, Law, 1.2 Law Faculty, Sandy Bay Campus, TAS

BIO

Dr Nina Hudson is a Senior Research Fellow and the Senior Research Fellow holding the McBurnie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Tasmania Law Reform Institute in the Faculty of Law, College of Arts, Law and Education. The Fellowship is aimed at generating research that promotes the legal rights and interests of older Tasmanians. 

 

Nina is a legal and socio-legal researcher, employing doctrinal and empirical qualitative and quantitative methods across multiple disciplines. Nina has a background in law and criminology (BA (Eng) (Adel), LLB (Hons) (Adel), GDLP, MPhil (Criminology) (Cantab), PhD (Law) (UTas), GradCertRes (UTas). She has 20 years of research, policy and law reform experience covering family, domestic and sexual violence, sentencing, criminology, mental health, disability and child safety and wellbeing. Nina’s career objective is to contribute to the community through the development and communication of high-quality policy and research outcomes that support human-centred and effective justice, health and human services systems. Nina’s PhD contributed to this objective, by comprising an original and substantial contribution to the literature on legal responses to intimate partner violence. Professionally, she has pursued roles that support evidence-based law reform and policy development in the areas of family violence, criminal and sentencing laws, criminology, civil mental health and disability laws, and the safety and wellbeing of children and young people.


Her doctorate in law at the University of Tasmania explored therapeutic jurisprudence and judicial court-craft in communicating sentencing decisions to intimate partner violence offenders in Tasmanian and Victorian courts. Her academic and policy work intersect in examining legal, policy and practice responses to behaviour in a range of systemic contexts, including criminal justice, civil justice, child protection, and education. She has a particular interest in approaches that draw on therapeutic, restorative and trauma-informed frameworks for behaviour-change and those that promote the rights, voices, safety and wellbeing of children and young people. 

 

Nina also works as an independent research consultant. She has been regularly engaged an expert consultant researcher, writer and content editor on legal and regulatory projects and socio-legal, criminological research in both academic and government contexts, and policy submissions to government and parliamentary inquiries. Nina has also been engaged as an expert presenter for family violence and sexual assault judical education programs. This included such work for organisations such as the National Judicial College of Australia, the National Centre for Action Against Child Sexual Abuse, and the County Court of Victoria. She has also provided professional copy-editing and publication services. She has been the editorial assistant for Psychiatry, Psychology and Law since 2016 and co-edited a special issue of the journal on judicial and lawyer wellbeing and stress, volume 31(3) published in June 2024. 


In 2023-2034, Nina was a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies in the Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Research and Evaluation Team. In 2023, Nina worked in a policy role focusing on responses to behaviour in education settings in the Inclusion and Wellbeing Directorate, Department for Education (SA). In 2022, Nina was a Principal Policy Officer for the Commission for Children and Young People in Victoria. Also in 2022, Nina held numerous short-term research appointments at the University of Tasmania, including Assistant Acting Director of the Tasmania Law Reform Institute, Investigator on the Sexual Violence in Southern Tasmania project, and Research Fellow on Evaluation of Baptcare’s Implementation of the Caring Dads™ and Mothers in Mind® Programs in Tasmania. While undertaking her PhD, Nina held numerous research assistant and teaching roles in the Faculty of Law. 

Prior to her commencing her PhD in 2016, Nina worked in a range of senior roles in independent advisory bodies in the South Australian and Victorian public service providing advice on legal policy and law reform, conducting research and evaluation and undertaking consultation. Between 2012 and 2015, Nina held two Team Leader roles: leading an independent review commissioned by the Minister for Corrections on the management of serious sex offenders under the Serious Sex Offenders (Detention and Supervision) Act 2009 (Vic), and the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s review of the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act 1997 (Vic). From 2009, Nina conducted legal policy and criminological research at the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council on a broad range of issues across sentencing and criminal law, including parole, confiscation, appeals, family violence, specialist courts, offence seriousness and sentencing guidance. Between 2006 to 2008, Nina worked as a Senior Evaluation Officer in the South Australian Office of Crime Statistics and Research, primarily conducting evaluations of youth alcohol and drug diversion programs. Following her admission to practice in the Supreme Court of South Australia in 2003, Nina worked as a Judge’s Associate in the District Court of South Australia between 2003 and 2005.

 

Expertise

Family violence law (criminal and civil)
Sentencing law
Criminal law
Therapeutic jurisprudence
Elder abuse
Criminology
Child protection and safety
Human rights law (children and young people)

Collaboration

Nina has previously collaborated with colleagues at the Tasmanian Institute for Law Enforcement Studies (TILES) on two projects as follows:

- Sexual violence in Southern Tasmania, funded by Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS) (2022), and
- Evaluation of Baptcare’s implementation of the Caring Dads™ and Mothers in Mind® programs in Tasmania (partnership with and funded by Baptcare) (2022).

Previous research appointments

- Assistant Acting Director (part-time), Tasmania Law Reform Institute (TLRI), Faculty of Law (2022)
- Investigator, Sexual violence in Southern Tasmania, funded by Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS) (2022); and
- Research Fellow, Evaluation of Baptcare’s implementation of the Caring Dads™ and Mothers in Mind® programs in Tasmania (partnership with and funded by Baptcare) (2022)
- Research assistant, Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania on the following projects:
*SPSS coding of data from serious injury cases sentenced in the Supreme Court of Tasmania to form a database of sentencing factors.
*Articulating Legal Scholarship within the Creativity, Culture and Society Theme, Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania: interviewing legal scholars, qualitative data analysis and report writing.
*National Study on Public Opinion on Bail, Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania: literature review on methods to adopt in gauging public opinion.
-Research Fellow, Melbourne Social Equity Institute, University of Melbourne (2020)

Fields of Research
• Causes and prevention of crime (440201)
• Legal theory, jurisprudence and legal interpretation (480410)
• Victims (440218)
• Counselling, wellbeing and community services (440902)
• Applied sociology, program evaluation and social impact assessment (441001)
• Health services and systems (420399)
• Social change (441004)
• Correctional theory, offender treatment and rehabilitation (440202)

Research Objectives
• Violence and abuse services (230114)
• Gender and sexualities (230108)
• Families and family services (230107)
• Crime prevention (230402)
• Rehabilitation and correctional services (230408)
• Expanding knowledge in human society (280123)

SCHOOL AND PORTFOLIO

  • Faculty of Law

FIELD OF RESEARCH