About the Researcher

Professor Linda Steele (she/her) has been researching disability law and social issues for over a decade, having previously been a solicitor with the Intellectual Disability Rights Service. Her research focuses on the role of law, human rights and transitional justice in perpetration, redress and repair of violence and other injustices experienced by disabled and older people. ​She explores these concerns in a range of contexts including institutionalisation, sterilisation, criminal justice incarceration, restrictive practices, and segregated employment.

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Linda is currently leading a program of research titled 'Truth Justice Repair'. She is researching the role of specialised individual redress schemes, truth commissions and reparations in responding to injustices against disabled people and older people.

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Linda's earlier research focused on the role of law in carceral control and violence against disabled people. This earlier research used the concept of ‘disability-specific lawful violence’ to understand as legally sanctioned violence a wide variety of non-consensual interventions in the bodies and lives of disabled people, such as through civil mental health law, guardianship law and court diversion law.

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Linda is the author of Disability, Criminal Justice and Law (2020 Routledge) and co-editor of Sites of Conscience: Place, Memory and the Project of Deinstitutionalization (2024 UBC Press), The Legacies of Institutionalisation: Disability, Law and Policy in the 'Deinstitutionalised' Community (2020 Hart Publishing), and Normalcy and Disability: Intersections Among Norms, Law, and Culture (2018 Routledge).

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Linda deeply values working with disabled people and Disabled People’s Organisations across many of her research projects. Many of her recent research publications are available in accessible Easy Read summaries. Linda's research has been cited by law reform commissions, parliamentary committees and Royal Commissions. She is a co-author of research reports commissioned by the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

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Linda teaches civil court procedure law and mental health and disability law. She is currently exploring reparative pedagogies through her own teaching methods. In 2021 Linda was the inaugural recipient of the Australian Legal Education Award (ALEA) for Excellence in Teaching (Engagement) for ‘transforming students’ understanding of disability and mental health law and empowering them to become agents of disability justice through engaging with communities’. In 2020 Linda was awarded the UTS Teaching and Learning Citation for ‘empowering law students to be agents of disability justice’.

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Learn more about Linda's research and teaching: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Linda.Steele