Associate Professor Ben Mathews

Dr Ben Mathews is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He is Director of Research in the School of Law, and is a member of the Health Law Research Centre: http://www.hlrc.qut.edu.au/. Ben is also a member of the ‘Rights and welfare of young people’ Research Program in the QUT Children and Youth Research Centre: http://www.cyrc.qut.edu.au/.   In 2013 he was appointed to the editorial board of Child Abuse and Neglect. He gained his PhD in 2002, studying the law of children’s criminal responsibility. He has published over 50 scholarly works, mostly on issues concerning children and the law. He is now co-editing a major new book on mandatory reporting laws, which will be published in 2014.  

Current major research areas involve four key topics concerning law and children:

1. Law and child abuse and neglect (mandatory reporting laws, systemic responses to child maltreatment, civil liability and legal remedies for child abuse, institutional child abuse, redress schemes, statutes of limitation);
2. Children and medical law (children’s health generally, consent to treatment, medico-legal issues);
3. Children’s rights (generally, and including cultural violence eg female genital mutilation);
4. Law in school contexts.

Empirical studies. In recent years Ben has undertaken major studies of the law, theory and practice of mandatory reporting laws. Ben has been involved in the two largest empirical studies of mandatory reporting in Australia: a study of Queensland nurses’ reporting of all types of child abuse and neglect; and a 3 year ARC-funded study of teachers reporting child sexual abuse in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. Results of the ARC study influenced changes to Queensland legislation, and policy and teacher training in three States. He has published on this topic in national and international journals with collaborators from Australia, the USA and Europe.   

PhD supervision. Ben has supervised four PhD students to completion, and now supervises ten PhD students.  

External research funding. Teachers Reporting Child Sexual Abuse: Towards Evidence-based Reform of Law, Policy and Practice (Professor Des Butler, Associate Professor Ann Farrell, Dr Ben Mathews and Dr Kerryann Walsh), 2006-08, Australian Research Council Discovery Projects Grant ($250,000)    

Internal research funding. Nurses and mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect (Fraser, Mathews, Walsh, Dunne), 2005, IHBI Seeding Grant ($48,147.62)