Key people

(Interim) Dean of Law

Professor Catherine Renshaw

Catherine Renshaw is Interim Dean of the School of Law. Catherine commenced as a Professor at Western Sydney University in 2019, following four years as Deputy Dean of Law at Australian Catholic University. Prior to this, Catherine taught and researched at the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Newcastle. Catherine is a passionate educator, deeply committed to the success of her students and to the powerful role that education plays in creating a better society.

Catherine holds a PhD from the University of Sydney, a Master of Laws from the University of Sydney, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales, and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Sydney. Catherine has been admitted to practice as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia, and she holds Associate Membership with the Law Society of New South Wales. Prior to entering academia, Catherine practiced as a lawyer for commercial law firms Allens Linklaters and Sparke Helmore, and for the Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales. Catherine maintains strong connections with the legal profession in Sydney and with state and federal governments. Before commencing as a lawyer, Catherine spent a year working in a refugee camp on the border of Mozambique and South Africa.

Catherine’s field of research is international human rights law, and she has an internationally recognized track-record of publication in the field of human rights law and democratization, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific. Catherine has received numerous research grants, including for her work in Myanmar. She is Co-Chair of the International Human Rights Law chapter of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law, and a member of the Executive Council of the Asian Society of International Law.

Deputy Dean

Ms Elen Seymour

Contact details

Elen currently holds the positions of Deputy Dean and Deputy Provost at Parramatta South Campus, with a recent appointment as the Interim Dean of Law from September to December 2023. She is also recognised as a Fellow of the Tax Institute. With a double degree in Arts and Law from the University of Sydney, Elen has dedicated over twenty years to the field of taxation. She launched her career at the Australian Taxation Office through their Graduate Program and quickly rose to join the International Tax team in Sydney. Her focus areas included transfer pricing and audits, particularly within the Transfer Pricing Record Review and the High Wealth Individual Trust review teams.

Her expertise led to her recruitment by PricewaterhouseCoopers in Sydney as a tax consultant, specialising in audit defense within the Transfer Pricing team. Elen's journey with PricewaterhouseCoopers took her internationally to Ottawa, Canada, where she excelled as a Senior Associate addressing Transfer Pricing issues, collaborating on projects in Montreal and Toronto. Elen returned to academia in Australia as a sessional lecturer at the University of Western Sydney and Wollongong University in 2003, teaching tax and commercial law at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Alongside her teaching, she pursued a Masters of Law focusing on tax and administrative law at the University of Sydney, completing it in 2008.

Her academic career progressed when she took on a full-time role as a Lecturer in Taxation Law and Financial Services at the School of Law in 2010, advancing to Senior Lecturer by 2018. Elen's leadership continued to evolve as she became Director Academic Program in the School of Law in July 2017, Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching in 2020, Deputy Dean in May 2022, and ultimately, Interim Dean in September 2023. Elen's research, mirroring the breadth of her professional journey, is unified by a commitment to accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. Her work addresses better regulation and taxation of charities, harnesses technology and social media to improve accessibility and inclusivity of legal education, and advocates for academic integrity as a foundation of an inclusive higher education system.

Associate Dean (Research)

Professor Michael Head

Contact details

Michael Head is a widely-published Professor in the School of Law at Western Sydney University. His research areas are administrative law, public law, emergency law, war powers, law and society, legal theory, socialist law, civil liberties, democratic rights, Marxist legal theory. Michael completed his jurisprudence and law degrees at Monash University, his Master of Laws at Columbia University and his PhD at Western Sydney University. Apart from administrative law textbooks, his recent books include: Domestic Military Powers, Law and Human Rights: Calling out the Armed Forces (2020, Routledge); The Legal Power to Launch War: Who Decides? (with Kristian Boehringer) (2019, Routledge); Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice: the Long Shadow of Carl Schmitt (2016, Ashgate). Michael’s latest book is Democracy, Protest and the Law: Defending a Democratic Right (2024, Routledge). That book concerns the following:

In a new era of rising protests, social unrest and political discontent globally, especially over climate change, war dangers, austerity measures and social inequality, the right to protest is a critical democratic right. Yet it is increasingly controversial and subject to government reaction. This book poses a crucial question: how to defend and extend democracy? It examines the critical historical, social, political, ethical and legal issues raised by the basic democratic right to protest and the legislative and executive measures being taken by governments to restrict it.

Associate Dean (HDR)

Professor Rehan Abeyratne

Contact details

Rehan Abeyratne is a Professor at the School of Law. His primary research area is comparative constitutionalism. He serves as co-chair of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S) Committee on New Directions in Scholarship, Subject Editor at the Asian Journal of Comparative Law, and Book Reviews Editor at Comparative Constitutional Studies. Professor Abeyratne is the author of Strategic Cosmopolitanism: LGBTQ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (forthcoming with Oxford University Press). He is a co-editor of Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges (Cambridge University Press 2021), The Law and Politics of Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments in Asia (Routledge 2021), and the Routledge Handbook of Asian Parliaments (Routledge 2023). Professor Abeyratne has authored articles in leading journals including the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON), Yale Journal of International Law, and Global Constitutionalism, as well as chapters in edited volumes published by Hart, Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press.