Dr Kelley Burton

Since 2000, Kelley has worked as an academic in the QUT School of Law. Kelley has taught 11 undergraduate core law units spanning across all year levels of the law degree, including skills based units.

Her outstanding teaching and learning performance and ongoing efforts in supporting innovative ways of learning have been recognised by the following teaching awards:

• 2001 QUT Faculty of Law Achievement in Teaching (Casual Academics) Award
• 2003 QUT Compassionate Pioneer Award
• 2003 QUT Faculty of Law Excellence in Teaching Commendation Award
• 2004 QUT Faculty of Law Excellence in Teaching Award
• 2006 QUT Faculty of Law Students’ Voice Award
• 2008 Vice-Chancellor’s LEX Survey Achievement Award 
• 2008 Vice-Chancellor’s LEX Achievement Award for the LWB238 Fundamentals of Criminal Law teaching team.

Kelley and Associate Professor Thomas Crafts co-authored ‘The Criminal Codes: Commentary and Materials’ (6th ed), which was published by Lawbook Co. in 2009. This book offers a thorough grounding in the fundamental principles of criminal law and facilitates critical thinking.

In 2009, Kelley was the first student to complete a PhD in Law at USQ.

Kelley’s thesis entitled “A Principled Approach to Criminalisation: When Should Making and/or Distributing Visual Recordings be Criminalised?” takes a principled approach to examining the criminalisation of making and/or distributing visual recordings by exploring constructs of privacy, harm, morality, culpability, consent, punishment, social welfare and individual autonomy. This is a contemporary topic given the widespread use of digital cameras, mobile phone cameras, video cameras, web cams, the internet, email, the blogosphere, privacy concerns and shifts in modern culture.

In September 2008, Kelley was appointed as a Law Editor for the QUT Law and Justice Journal, and in July 2008, Kelley was elected as the Criminal Law Interest Group Convenor for the Australasian Law Teachers Association.

Kelley was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), in Canada. In January 2007, she taught the unit Privacy and Criminal Law at the UWO, which she designed around her cutting edge PhD research.

Kelley and Professor Geraldine Mackenzie co-authored a book titled, ‘Criminal Law in Queensland and Western Australia’, which was published by Lexis Nexis in 2006. The primary purpose of this book is to provide criminal law students in Queensland and Western Australia with formative feedback on their understanding of criminal law, and to develop their problem-solving skills.

Kelley has contributed to the QUT Faculty of Law’s research culture by producing a range of DEST rated publications including a refereed book chapter and several refereed scholarly journal articles. Some of these publications are available online. She has also presented a range of international and national conference papers on Criminal Law and Justice, and the scholarship of teaching.

In 2005, Kelley won the prize for the Best Research Paper at the University of Queensland TC Beirne School of Law Postgraduate Law Research Colloquium, which was attended by postgraduate law students from across Australia. Kelley completed her LLM at QUT and received the award for the Highest Graduating Grade Point Average in the Master of Laws by coursework.

Research interests

• Criminal Law & Justice
• Scholarship of Teaching