Rate My Professor Imelda Deinla

Dr. Imelda Deinla is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of New England, where she joined in 2023. She earned her PhD in 2010 and LLM in 2004 from the University of New South Wales, and her LLB in 1994 and BA in 1990 from the University of the Philippines. Her career includes prior roles as a Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University until 2021, where she researched for over eight years on rule of law, judicial politics, women and the judiciary, and hybrid justice in post-conflict settings while teaching criminology and violence against women. She also served as Associate Professor and Senior Fellow at the Ateneo de Manila University School of Government for two years, developing courses on critical criminology, research methods, human rights, and international criminal law. Earlier, she worked as a litigation and corporate lawyer, legal advocate on women’s rights and gender violence in the Philippines, and researcher at the University of New South Wales focusing on interdisciplinary studies of law in non-Western environments. Deinla has engaged in policy work and capacity building on rule of law and justice in conflict and post-conflict areas, including Mindanao in the Philippines, Myanmar, and African countries.

Deinla's research interests include law and society, criminology, international law, international criminal law and human rights, law and democracy in Southeast Asia and ASEAN, post-conflict justice and legal pluralism, and women in law and judicial politics. She authored the monograph The Development of the Rule of Law in ASEAN: the state and regional integration (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and co-edited The Philippines from Aquino II to Duterte: change, continuity – and rupture (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2019), as well as Conglomerates and Inclusive Development in the Philippines: Perspectives from Asian Economies (World Scientific, forthcoming 2025). Notable publications feature 'Punitiveness and Atrocity: Why are some Filipinos vulnerable to supporting mass violence?' (Punishment & Society, 2024), 'Legal Hybridity, trust and legitimacy of Shari’ah in the Bangsamoro' (Law and Policy, 2019), 'Public Support and Judicial Empowerment of the Philippine Supreme Court' (Contemporary Southeast Asia, 2014), and chapters such as 'Filipino Women Judges and their Role in Advancing Judicial Independence' in Women and the Judiciary in the Asia Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 2021). She coordinates units including World Legal Systems and Law in Context at UNE.