Rate My Professor Rene Cornish

Cornish's PhD research focused on the socio-legal consequences of social media on society, particularly employment law in the Global South context. Her work is positioned at the intersections of technology, social media, race, online hate speech, and marginalised communities. Primary research interests include visual jurisprudence, the semiotics of law, forensic linguistics, social media as ‘witnessing,’ hate studies, and law, technology, and humans. Notable publications comprise ‘Unsilenced Employee Voice in South Africa: Social Media Misconduct Dismissals as Evidence of E-Voice’ (2022, Management Revue); ‘Dismissals for Social Media Hate Speech in South Africa: Animalistic Dehumanisation and the Circulation of Racist Words and Images’ (2022, with Kieran Tranter, International Journal of the Semiotics of Law); ‘Textual and Non-Verbal Expressions of Cyberhate in South African Social Media Misconduct Dismissals’ (2024 chapter, Law and Visual Jurisprudence series); and ‘Emojis in the Digital Post Literate: A nested polycrisis’ (2025, forthcoming, International Journal of the Semiotics of Law). She received a nomination for the ODTA Outstanding Doctoral Research Award at QUT. At UNE, Cornish teaches Introduction to Legal Studies and Technology and the Law, supervises LLB Honours and LLM research, and acts as Academic Integrity Officer.