Dr Jess Mant awarded an Australian Research Council Fellowship
ACJI celebrates the outstanding achievement of Deputy Director Dr Jess Mant, who has been awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA Fellowship).
Jess has been awarded $475,406 over three years to investigate procedural justice in ‘uneven’ family court hearings, which involve one party with legal representation and another who is self-represented. These kinds of hearings make up around a quarter of the 30,000 family law cases in Australia’s family courts each year. Jess’ research will use innovative empirical methods and data collection strategies with a range of justice system participants to inform the development of a best-practice protocol to support judges in uneven hearings and advance procedural justice for parties.
The fellowship research builds on Jess’ deep expertise on litigants’ experiences in family law, including her books on Litigants in Person and the Family Justice System (Hart, 2022) and Legal Aid and the Future of Access to Justice (with Denvir, Kinghan and Newman, Hart, 2023).
Since Jess joined us at Monash Law in 2022 she has made a terrific impact. Her DECRA Fellowship was one of only 3 awards made to legal scholars out of 200 across all disciplines. Jess, we congratulate you on this well-deserved recognition of your research excellence and look forward to the contribution your work will make to advancing access to justice in Australia.