Pip Nicholson

Pip Nicholson is the Director of the Asian Law Centre. She is also the Centre’s Associate Director (Vietnam) and Director of the Comparative Legal Studies Program. Her teaching and research are in dispute resolution, comparative legal studies, law and reform in Asia, and law and society in Asia. Pip has degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Melbourne, a Masters in Public Policy from ANU and a doctorate from the University of Melbourne. Pip regularly advises on court reform in Vietnam. Her most recent book is John Gillespie and Pip Nicholson (eds) Law and Development and the Global Discourses of Legal Transfers, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Pip has previously been admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Pip’s publications include: Socialism and Legal Change: The Dynamics of Vietnamese and Chinese Reform (co-edited with John Gillespie, 2006); Borrowing Court Systems: the Experience of Socialist Vietnam (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007); Examining Practice, Interrogating Theory: Comparative Legal Studies in Asia (co-edited with Sarah Biddulph, Martinus Nijhoff, 2008); New Courts in Asia (co-edited with Andrew Harding, Routledge, 2009); and Law and Development and the Global Discourses of Legal Transfers, (co-edited with John Gillespie, Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Pip holds an ARC grant with Camille Cameron to investigate court-oriented legal reform in Cambodia and Vietnam. She also holds an ARC grant with Tim Lindsey to analyse ‘Drugs, Law and Criminal Procedure in Southeast Asia’.

Her current research interests include law and legal change (including court and legal sector reform) in transitional countries, drug trials in Asia and cross-cultural legal research and development. Pip has spoken on these issues in Vietnam, the USA, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, France, Thailand, Hong Kong, Sweden, UK and the Netherlands.

Pip is an internationally recognised expert in courts and legal reform (particularly within socialist states). She has consulted widely on these issues.