Alecia Simmonds

Alecia Simmonds is a multi-award-winning scholar and writer who works at the interface of law and history. Her most recent book Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law won the NSW Premier's Prize for best book in Australian history, the Australian Law Research Awards for best book, the biennial Hancock Prize for best book and the Australian and New Zealand Legal History award for best book 2023. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award and the Ernest Scott Award. Her first book Wild Man: The True Story of a Police Killing Mental Illness and the Law won the Davitt Prize for best crime non-fiction. She has published in national and international journals on the relationship between law, imperialism, gender, race and intimacy in Australia and the Pacific. Her articles appear regularly in The Sydney Morning Herald, Inside Story and The Australian Book Review and she appears as a regular guest on ABC Radio National. She is a Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Project entitled, Women's Century of Struggle: Juries, Justice and Citizenship and is the current recipient of a grant by the Francis Forbes Society which will enable her to research how defamation actions were used in the early-twentieth century to protest race-based harms. Alecia is also the co-editor of the journal History Australia and is on the NSW committee for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. She is interested in supervising students who wish to write creatively and imaginatively about law, feminism, emotions and legal history.