Joanna Howe

Professor Joanna Howe is a distinguished academic at the University of Adelaide, serving as Professor of Law within the Adelaide Law School, part of the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics. She is an internationally recognized expert on the legal regulation of temporary labour migration and also researches laws impacting children, including abortion and surrogacy. Her work bridges academic scholarship with practical policy impact, regularly informing government decisions on migration programs.

Professor Howe holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Law from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Her academic credentials reflect her exceptional scholarship and commitment to legal research.

Professor Howe's primary research focus centers on temporary labour migration regulation, with particular expertise in how migration status affects worker vulnerability in sectors like horticulture and care work. Her research examines the intersection of migration law, labor rights, and workplace protections, with a special focus on international students, seasonal workers, and care workers. She investigates how legal frameworks create conditions that can lead to exploitation while also identifying pathways for more equitable systems.

Her scholarly output reveals consistent themes across migration pathways, labor market segmentation, and worker protections. Professor Howe's research demonstrates how temporary migration programs intersect with agricultural labor needs, student work rights, and care worker mobility. Her work consistently highlights regulatory gaps that create vulnerable worker populations while offering evidence-based solutions for more sustainable labor migration systems.

Professor Howe has received significant recognition for her contributions to legal scholarship and policy:

• SA InDaily 40 under 40 Award
• University of Adelaide's Women's Research Excellence Award
• Rhodes Scholarship

Professor Howe actively supervises Masters and PhD students and leads multiple significant research grants. She is project leader on an ARC Linkage Grant examining undocumented migrant work on farms for the horticulture industry (HIA, VG15025, $231,207, 2016) and another for the Fair Work Ombudsman on international students in the Australian workplace (FWO, $58,960, 2016). She is also a chief investigator on an ARC Discovery Project investigating unpaid work experience and internships in Australia (DP150104516, $207,200, 2015-2018), a Commonwealth National Research Grant examining refugee women in the workplace ($311,000), and collaborates on international research projects including one from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Professor Howe's policy impact extends beyond academia through her appointments to government advisory bodies, including serving on an expert panel to review the Australian Migration Program (2022), membership on the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration (2021), and representation on an ILO working group on temporary labour migration (2019). Her recommendations have been adopted by successive federal governments, demonstrating the practical value of her research for shaping national migration policy.