Professor Anna Huggins

Biography

Anna is a Professor in the School of Law. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of regulation and compliance, with a particular focus on environmental compliance and digital regulation. A key theme in her research is exploring the dynamics and legitimacy of evolving regulatory and compliance approaches in response to disruption. She has published widely on international environmental regulation and compliance. Her book, Multilateral Environmental Agreements and Compliance: The Benefits of Administrative Procedures, was published by Routledge in 2018. Her latest co-authored book, Natural Capital, Agriculture and the Law, was published by Edward Elgar in 2022. Anna's research also examines innovative regulatory and compliance processes in response to digitisation and automation. She led a research project on the opportunities and challenges of digitising regulation with CSIRO's Data61 from 2020-2021. She currently leads an ARC Linkage Project (2023-2026) on optimising digital compliance processes in financial services organisations.

Anna is the Director of Studies (Law), having previously served as the acting Director of Education from April 2022 - March 2023, the Director of Undergraduate Programs (Curriculum) from 2017-2020, and the acting Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching from July-December 2018. Anna has a Master of Laws (Research) in legal education, which led to a number of publications on curriculum design in law, as well as a co-authored textbook. She was recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2020.

Anna holds a PhD from UNSW Law, for which she received a 2015 PhD Excellence Award. She also has a Master of Laws (Research) degree from QUT, and a Bachelor of International Studies/Bachelor of Laws (Hons) degree from UNSW. She is a chief investigator and former co-leader of the Governing Digital Societies research program in QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre. She is interested in supervising research projects in the areas of environmental regulation and compliance, digital and data-driven regulation, and public law and automated decision-making.

Before joining QUT, Anna worked at UNSW Law and the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change. ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1634-3505