Rate My Professor Ben Hightower

Ben Hightower is a Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. He holds a PhD in Law from the Legal Intersections Research Centre at the University of Wollongong, completed in 2013, with a thesis entitled Refugee Limbo. This doctoral work employed qualitative research methods to establish the concept of ‘legal limbo’ in the fields of refugee and human rights law, examined through various legal and socio-legal lenses. Hightower’s research involves transdisciplinary explorations in the field of law, drawing on observations and knowledges from areas such as religion, music, art, and culture. He is particularly interested in how law, legal institutions, and legal bodies might be (re)imagined. Part of his scholarship concerns legal liminalities or threshold spaces and how these are experienced by marginalised communities, especially refugees and asylum seekers. He also investigates practices of crimmigration and the criminalisation of dissent in liberal democracies. Ben has presented his research at a number of universities in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Hightower’s major publications include “More than luck: Australian protest in a social movement society” with Scott East (Contention, 2019); “Floris White Bull responds to the Editors on protest and the film AWAKE: A Dream from Standing Rock” (M/C Journal, 2018); “(Re)Imagining law: marginalised bodies/Indigenous spaces” with Kirsten Anker (International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 2016); “Refugees, limbo and the Australian media” (International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 2015); and “The refugee limbo: negotiating the bar of Australian law” (Griffith Law Review, 2015). He serves as an Australian Advisor, Member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. Hightower is a member of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia. His teaching contributions have been honoured with the Faculty of Arts Learning & Teaching Innovation Award in December 2023, shared with colleagues, and the University of Wollongong Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching and Learning in 2016.