What we do
Aims
Activities

Who we are
Co-Director:
Neil Gunningham

Co-Director:
Richard Johnstone

Member:
Liz Bluff

Associate members:
Alan Clayton
Neil Foster
Andrew Hopkins
Michael Quinlan

Consortium members

Socio-Legal Research Centre

Neil Gunningham

Neil Gunningham is the co-director of the National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. He is a lawyer and interdisciplinary social scientist who holds professorial appointments with the Centre and with the School of Resources, Environment and Society. Previously he was Foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Environmental Law at the ANU, Visiting and Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics. He has also been a consultant to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and to various environmental and occupational health and safety regulatory agencies in Australia.

Neil’s research has been concerned to identify the contribution that broader, innovative forms of regulation can make to safety, health and environmental policy. His work on regulatory pluralism demonstrates the potential for resources outside the public sector to be harnessed in furtherance of government policy, and how combinations of public and private orderings and can be integrated into an overall optimal regulatory mix. He has also sought to test empirically, the value of different approaches, and to identify the comparative advantage of different instruments in different institutional, economic and social contexts. His most recent work (with Darren Sinclair) has concerned OHS in the mining industry, with a focus on workplace culture, the creation of trust, and how law, regulation and policy interact and influence workplace practice.

His most recent books are: Mine Safety: Law, Regulation, Policy, (Federation Press, 2007), Leaders and Laggards: Reconfiguring Environmental Regulation (with Sinclair, Greenleaf UK, 2002); Regulating Workplace Safety, (with Johnstone) OUP, UK, 1999, and Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Regulation (with Grabosky), OUP, UK, 1998. He is also the author of numerous articles published both nationally and internationally.

For CV and further information see: www.anu.edu.au/fellows/ngunningham/