Mr Michael Blissenden

Senior Lecturer, School of Law

• Career Profile
• Interests
• Publications
• Conferences

Career Profile

Michael Blissenden has been involved with taxation for over 25 years. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from UNSW he spent 7 years in the Australian Tax Office, representing the Commissioner and assisting counsel with Federal Court matters. After completing his LLM at Sydney University he worked as a specialist taxation writer for the commercial publishers Butterworths and CCH. For the past 10 years he has been involved with the teaching taxation, firstly at ATAX UNSW and currently at the School of Law, UWS.

Interests

Learning and Teaching Interests

Mr Blissenden has been heavily involved with exploring possibilities for improvement for student learning. He has examined ways to motivate and stimulate student interest through the use of various teaching methods such as role plays, storytelling and service learning. The result of such learning methods has been presented at teaching and learning conferences and through refereed journal articles.

Research Interests

Taxation Law
Administrative Law

Engagement Interests

Service Learning for Taxation Law students in ATO Tax Help Centres to assist low income earners prepare their returns.

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Publications

Selected list

• “Assessment and Reflection in the Service Learning Arena: An application to the area of Revenue Law” The Law Teacher (UK) Vol 40(2) pp 173-194
• “Service Learning: An Example of Experiential Education in the area of Taxation Law” Legal Education Review Vol 16, no 1-2, pp183-193.
• “Using Storytelling as a Teaching Model in a Law School: The Experience in an Australian Context” The Law Teacher, Vol 41, no 3, pp 260-274.
• “Service-Learning and Staff Development: A two way mirror of Reflection” Alternative law Journal Monographs, Vol 1 pp 47-52.
• “Taxation of Trust Income under Div 6: A reflection on Justice Hill’s contribution” Australian Tax Review Vol 35 pp 262-273.
• “Procedural Fairness and Non-Assessing Decisions of the Federal Commissioner of Taxation” Journal of Australian Taxation, Vol 5, pp 466-484.
  

Conferences

Recent conferences:

• “Using the Web as a Resource to Facilitate Student Learning and Engagement on Landmark Taxation Law Cases” ATTA Conference Hobart Jan 2008.
• “Legal Education Today: Teaching to Actively Engage law Students” ALTA Conference Perth Sept 2007.