Professor Hunter began her academic career in Australia, where she taught first at the University of Melbourne and then at Griffith University in Brisbane. At Griffith she served as Director of the Socio-Legal Research Centre and Dean of the Law Faculty. She moved to the UK in 2006, and spent eight years at the University of Kent and four years at Queen Mary University of London before returning to Kent Law School in 2018. Together with Professor Clare McGlynn and Dr Erika Rackley at Durham University, she was one of the co-organisers of the Feminist Judgments Project, in which a group of academics and practitioners wrote alternative judgments in a series of key cases in English law, imagining how a feminist judge sitting on the court might have decided the case. The project resulted in the publication of Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice (Hart Publishing, 2010). She was a founding editor in 2011 of feminists@law, an online open access journal of feminist legal scholarship, and continues to edit the journal with a group of KLS colleagues. Professor Hunter’s current research on feminist judging includes projects with Professor Erika Rackley (KLS) on Lady Hale’s contributions to the Supreme Court and to law more generally; with Professor Emerita Kathy Mack and Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu (Flinders University) on feminist judging in lower courts; and with Dr Danielle Tyson (Deakin) on sentencing in domestic homicide cases. She is currently engaged in several projects focusing on family courts’ handling of domestic abuse allegations, including a co-edited special issue of the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, Vol 40(4) (2018). Her current research on access to justice includes work with Professor Liz Trinder (Exeter) on judgecraft in relation to litigants in person; and a co-authored contribution on Lawyers and Access to Justice in a forthcoming edited collection on Lawyers in 21st Century Society.
Professor Hunter Major Publications:
- Mapping Paths to Family Justice: Resolving Family Disputes in Neoliberal Times, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 (with A Barlow, J Smithson and J Ewing). Winner of the 2018 Hart SLSA Book Prize.
- Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, Hart Publishing, 2010 (edited with C McGlynn and E Rackley).
- Domestic Violence Law Reform and Women’s Experience in Court: The Implementation of Feminist Reforms in Civil Proceedings, Cambria Press, 2008
- Rethinking Equality Projects in Law: Feminist Challenges, Hart Publishing, 2008 (edited).
- Choice and Consent: Feminist Engagements with Law and Subjectivity, Routledge-Cavendish, 2007 (edited with S Cowan).
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
- ‘Feminist Judging in the “Real World”’ (2018) 8(9) Onati Socio-Legal Series, 1275-1306. Shortlisted for the SLSA socio-legal article prize 2019.
- ‘The Implementation of Feminist Law Reforms: The Case of Post-Provocation Sentencing’ (2017) 26(2) Social and Legal Studies 129-165 (with Danielle Tyson)
- ‘More than Just a Different Face? Judicial Diversity and Decision-Making’, (2015) 68 Current Legal Problems 119-141.
- ‘Contesting the Dominant Paradigm: Feminist Critiques of Liberal Legalism’, in M Davies and VE Munro (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Feminist Legal Theory, Ashgate, 2013, 13-30.
- ‘The Gendered “Socio” of Socio-Legal Studies’, in D Feenan (ed), Exploring the ‘Socio’ of Socio-Legal Studies, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 205-227.
- ‘Justice Marcia Neave: Case Study of a Feminist Judge’, in U Schultz and G Shaw (eds), Gender and Judging, Hart Publishing, 2013, 399-418.
- ‘Can Feminist Judges Make a Difference?’ (2008) 15 International Journal of the Legal Profession, 7-36.
- ‘Narratives of Domestic Violence’ (2006) 28 Sydney Law Review, 733-776.
- ‘Adversarial Mythologies: Policy Assumptions and Research Evidence in Family Law’ (2003) 30 Journal of Law & Society, 156-176.
- ‘Deconstructing the Subjects of Feminism: The Essentialism Debate in Feminist Theory and Practice’ (1996) 6 Australian Feminist Law Journal, 135-162.