Rate My Professor Carolyn Adams

Dr. Carolyn Adams serves as Honorary Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. She earned her PhD in Law from Macquarie University in 2022, with a thesis titled "Access to Government Data Collections of Personal Information for Health Research: Better Decision Making." Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Laws awarded in 1986 and a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies awarded in 1984, both from the Australian National University. Bringing over two decades of practical experience, Dr. Adams provided high-level legal and policy advice to state and federal governments, including the NSW Cabinet Office and the Attorney-General's Department. Prior to her academic appointment at Macquarie, she worked with the Australian Law Reform Commission on key inquiries: "Essentially Yours: The Protection of Genetic Information in Australia" (ALRC Report 96, 2003), "Same Crime, Same Time: Sentencing of Federal Offenders" (ALRC Report 103, 2006), "For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice" (ALRC Report 108, 2008), and "Secrecy Laws and Open Government in Australia" (ALRC Report 112, 2009).

In her teaching and research at Macquarie Law School, Dr. Adams focuses on public law, with emphasis on human rights and open government. Her research interests include public law and open government, freedom of information, secrecy laws and culture, transparency, accountability, privacy and the use of personal information, privacy legislation and regulation, data linkage including for research, human rights law, international human rights law and institutions, national human rights institutions, and bills of rights. Currently, she is engaged in a major project examining the ethics, law, and policy of sharing personal information in general practitioners' records for research, associated with the Data Horizons Research Centre. Dr. Adams regularly provides expert advice on privacy and handling of personal information to government and non-government organisations. She serves as the legal member on the Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee (Human Sciences & Humanities) since 2014 and was a member of the Macquarie Law School Higher Degree Research Committee from 2014 to 2018. Notable publications include "Towards best practice recommendations: perspectives from Australian GPs to inform the use of general practice data for research – a modified Delphi study" (Green et al., 2026, European Journal of General Practice), "Government databases and public health research: facilitating access in the public interest" (Adams & Allen, 2014, Journal of Law and Medicine), and "Data custodians and decision-making: a right to access government-held databases for research?" (Adams & Allen, 2014, AIAL Forum). She has given presentations including "Sharing Linked Data for Health Research: Better Decision Making" (2022) and "The Use of Big Data for Health Research: Building and Maintaining Social Licence" (2019).