Leading national and international expert on mental health, and disability law and policy, Dr Piers Gooding, will join the La Trobe Law School in 2024.
Dr Gooding’s work blends theoretical enquiry with applied qualitative research at the local, national and international level. His research expertise includes mental health and disability law, technologies of automation in care, and international human rights law.
Dr Gooding joins La Trobe from The University of Melbourne, where he is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and Senior Research Fellow.
His recent work on law and the politics of automation in mental health and other care services is cutting edge, having attracted national and international research funding, and directly impacting emerging law, policy and practice.
Dr Gooding’s research has been cited by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Peoples with Disabilities, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the high Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health in April 2020, the World Psychiatric Association, and the United Nations Children’s Fund.
Professor Fiona Kelly, Dean of the La Trobe Law School, says that Dr Gooding will further strengthen the School’s burgeoning reputation in mental health and disability research and contribute to the University’s expertise in care economy research.
“Dr Gooding comes to us with an outstanding international reputation in the mental health and disability fields, his research having attracted the imprimatur of the some of the leading organisations in the world,” Professor Kelly says.
“He is also arriving at the University at a time when our commitment to research in health and disability law and policy is accelerating. We are thrilled to be welcoming him into a research leadership role that will have real impact on the community.”
Dr Gooding is excited to contribute to La Trobe’s research leadership.
“It is so timely to be developing research on these fundamental human experiences. Disability has never been more prominent at the national and international-levels, and the same is true of mental health, aged care, and the like,” Dr Gooding says.
“In Australia, the recent Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has recommended a raft of law reform proposals, including a new Disability Rights Act. This proposed Act would seek to apply the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the domestic level. The Convention itself is approaching its 20-year anniversary and has sparked unprecedented disability law reform at the international level, yet many pressing issues remain across multiple areas of law.”
“La Trobe University is poised to make a major global contribution to these developments. I am privileged to be joining eminent scholars at the La Trobe Law School, and in other faculties across the University, as well as postgraduate and undergraduate students, in efforts to enrich the law and politics of disability, mental health and care more generally.”
