Ben Golder

Ben Golder is a Professor of Law at UNSW Sydney, based in the School of Law, Society & Criminology within the Faculty of Law + Justice. He has held prior academic positions at institutions including the University of East London, University College London, and New York University. His research focuses on critical legal theory, contemporary political theory, and international law/human rights, with a particular emphasis on postfoundationalist approaches to human rights. He has authored influential works like Foucault’s Law (2009) and Foucault and the Politics of Law (2015), and is currently working on a book titled Human Rights After Humanism: The Politics of Postfoundationalism.

Education: PhD in Legal Theory from Birkbeck College (University of London), first-class honours degrees in Law and English Literature from UNSW.

Research interests include biopolitical theory, legal genealogies, and the intersections between law, power, and rights. His articles and edited volumes explore topics such as the genealogy of human rights, judicial performativity, and neoliberalism’s impact on legal frameworks.

Awards include multiple prestigious research supervision awards (ARC PGC, UNSW, Australian Legal Education Awards) for his mentorship of PhD students. He co-founded the interdisciplinary research network Critique: A Network in Social, Political and Legal Thought, and collaborates nationally and internationally through affiliations with institutions like the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and the Australian Human Rights Institute.

Teaching and supervision focus on legal theory, critical pedagogy, and human rights. He currently supervises PhD topics ranging from the politics of migration governance to the biopolitics of prohibition in 20th-century America.