Rate My Professor Daniel Ghezelbash

Associate Professor Daniel Ghezelbash serves as an Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. He earned his PhD, LLB (Hons I), and BA (Hons I) from the University of Sydney, along with a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Australian National University. Joining Macquarie University in 2014 as a Senior Lecturer in Law, he founded and directed the award-winning Macquarie University Social Justice Clinic, inspired by models from Harvard Law School. Ghezelbash leads the Law and AI stream at the Macquarie AI-enabled Processes Research Centre, pioneering computational and jurimetrics approaches to judicial decision-making in Australia. He is a practicing refugee lawyer, Special Counsel at the National Justice Project since 2017, and Vice-President of Refugee Advice and Casework Services since 2018. He has established initiatives such as Wallumatta Legal, a not-for-profit providing low-cost family law advice via technology, and Tech4Justice, addressing systemic discrimination through complaint data. As an internationally recognised scholar, he held visiting fellowships at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, and scholarships at Harvard Law School, Brooklyn Law School, and New York Law School.

Ghezelbash's research focuses on comparative refugee and immigration law, fast-track asylum procedures under his ARC DECRA project, legal technology for access to justice, and countering cognitive biases in legal systems affecting First Nations people. His seminal book, Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World (Cambridge University Press, 2018), analyzes the diffusion of restrictive asylum policies globally. Notable publications include 'Hyper-legalism and obfuscation: how states evade their international obligations towards refugees' (American Journal of Comparative Law, 2020), 'The end of the right to seek asylum? COVID-19 and the future of refugee protection' (International Journal of Refugee Law, 2020, with N. Feith Tan), and 'Assessing refugee protection claims at Australian airports: the gap between law, policy, and practice' (Melbourne University Law Review, 2021, with R. Jeffries and A. Hirsch). His contributions extend to media commentary, strategic litigation, and supervision of postgraduate students in migration law, legal tech, and advocacy. Awards include the Macquarie Vice-Chancellor's 2021 Research Excellence Award, 2018 Faculty of Arts Research Excellence Award (ECR), 2018 Learning and Teaching Award, 2019 Faculty Teaching Award, and the 2021 ABC Top 5 Humanities Media Residency.