Jessica Lake

Dr Jessica Lake is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on media law, legal history, and feminist legal theory, emphasizing gendered dimensions of privacy, defamation, and copyright. She holds a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and is co-editor of History Australia.

Prior to academia, she practiced as a media and intellectual property lawyer. Her 2016 book The Face that Launched a Thousand Lawsuits (Yale UP) examines how 19th-century American women used legal avenues to protect their image rights, earning a W.K. Hancock Prize shortlist. Current projects include a Stanford UP book on defamation law's gendered history and ARC-funded research on 'The Colour of Sexual Slander.'

Her research spans colonial legal systems, digital privacy challenges (e.g., deepfakes), and #MeToo movement legal implications. Teaching includes 'Free Speech and Media Law' (2025).