Dr Sarah Ailwood

Contact Ms Sarah Ailwood

Position

  • Assistant Professor
  • Curriculum Co-ordinator

Qualifications

  • BA(Hons)
  • LLB (Hons)
  • PhD Wollongong: “‘What men ought to be’: masculinities in Jane Austen’s novels”


Awards

  • University of Canberra Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, 2010
  • Special Commendation for PhD thesis, University of Wollongong, 2007
  • Menzies Centre for Australian Studies Visiting Doctoral Scholarship, 2006
  • Australian Postgraduate Award, 2004-2007
  • University Medal, University of Wollongong, 2000


Teaching

First Year Law – Legal Systems, Legal Methods and Skills and the Transition Program
Literary Studies: Literature and Law


Research and Grants

Sarah has cross-disciplinary research interests in law and in literature, particularly in relation to women’s writing and history. 

Current projects

  • Law and Life Writing, particularly women’s voices within and beyond the courtroom and responses to the justice system
  • Authorship in Australian law and literary practice
  • Preparation of book manuscript, Jane Austen’s Men, based on PhD thesis
  • The First Year Higher Education experience in law
  • Editing the Canberra Law Review

Grants

  • UC Hothouse Grant: Using blended learning to enhance the first year law curriculum, 2010
  • Faculty of Law Research Grant: Women’s Life Writing and Responses to Justice, 2010


Peer-Reviewed Publications

  • Ailwood, S. ‘The Laws of God and Men: Eliza Davies’ Story of an Earnest Life’, Life Writing (forthcoming 2011)
  • Ailwood, S. "‘Too much in the common Novel style’: Reforming Masculinities in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility”. Frantz, S. and Rennhak, K. Women Constructing Men: Female Novelists and their Male Characters, 1750-2000. Lexington: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.
  • Ailwood, S. ‘Law, Gender and Print Culture in the Life Writing of Eliza Frances Robertson’. The Unsocial Sociability of Women’s Life Writing. Ed. Anne Collett and Louise D’Arcens. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
  • Ailwood, S. ‘Anxious Beginnings: Mental Illness, Reproduction and Nation Building in ‘Prelude’ and Prelude to Christopher’. Katherine Mansfield Studies 2 (2010)
  • Ailwood, S. ‘Romanticism in Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice’. Persuasions On-line. 27(2) (Summer 2007) http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no2/ailwood.htm 
  • Ailwood, S. and Peter Putnis ‘The Crimean War and Autralia's communication and media history’.  Australian Media Traditions 2007
  • Ailwood, S. ‘Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Tensions of Empire during the Modernist Period’. Kunapipi (2005) XXVII(2): 255-67.

Supervision

Sarah is available to supervise Honours and research students in the following areas:

  • Women and the law
  • Law and literature
  • Law and popular culture


Community engagement

2011

  • Submissions to Australian Law Reform Commission review of Censorship and Classification
  • Invited Speaker, ‘Jane Austen’s Bicentenary’, International Women’s Day Dinner, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 10 March 2011.
  • Invited Speaker, ‘Jane Austen’s Heroes’, Jane Austen Society, Brisbane, 21 May 2011
    2010
  • Panel member, Legal Studies Panel, ACT Board of Secondary Studies, 2010
  • Invited Speaker, Jane Austen Festival of Australia, April 2010
  • Radio and print media appearances


Professional Experience

Sarah has several years experience as a legal professional in the fields of financial services regulation, privacy and specialist legal research.