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Professor Melissa Crouch is a distinguished legal scholar at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law, specializing in comparative constitutional law with a regional focus on Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Myanmar. She holds a prominent position as a Professor and serves as co-director of the project on Constitutionalism in the Global South with Theunis Roux. Currently, she also runs the Asia Law & Policy Forum at UNSW and has previously served as Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Law (2019-21).
Her research expertise spans law and society, legal ethnography, law and religion, and the sociology of law, with particular emphasis on authoritarianism and law in postcolonial contexts. Professor Crouch has received numerous accolades including being elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2024) and receiving the prestigious Podgorecki Prize in 2022 for outstanding scholarship as an early career socio-legal scholar.
Professor Crouch's scholarly output demonstrates significant contributions to constitutional studies in the Global South, with notable publications including The Palimpsest Constitution: The Social Life of Constitutions in Myanmar (OUP, 2025), The Constitution of Myanmar (2019), and Law and Religion in Indonesia (2014). Her recent work examines the role of the military as a constitutional actor in Asia through her ARC Future Fellowship project (2025-28) titled Defending Constitutional Democracy: The Military & the Constitution in Asia.
Her scholarly recognition includes:
- Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (2024)
- Podgorecki Prize for outstanding early career socio-legal scholarship (2022)
- Honourable Mention for Distinguished Article Award from Asian Law & Society Association (2023)
- Multiple Postgraduate Supervisor of the Year Awards at UNSW
- Shortlisting for the Australian Legal Research Awards book award
Professor Crouch actively supervises numerous PhD candidates working on diverse topics across Southeast Asia, including research on access to justice, gender-based violence, constitutional court decisions, and judicial regulation. Her extensive grant history demonstrates sustained research excellence, with major projects funded by the Australian Research Council, Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, and various international foundations. She also contributes significantly to academic discourse through her editorial roles with leading journals including Law & Social Inquiry, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, and Women in Asia Publication Series.
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