The Melbourne LLB

Dr Sarah Biddulph joined the Centre in 1989 and was appointed to a lectureship in the Law School in 1992. She is a graduate of Sydney University in Law and Chinese Studies and studied in Shanghai as one of the Attorney-General’s representatives under an exchange agreement with the PRC Ministry of Justice. She worked as a lawyer in Shanghai with the Australian law firm Blake Dawson Waldron between 1998 and 2001 and has near-native fluency in Mandarin.

Sarah is the co-founder of the China Law Network and teaches and researches in the area of Chinese law. Her work has focussed on contemporary Chinese administrative law, labour and comparative law. Sarah currently holds an ARC grant with Sean Cooney and Zhu Ying to examine regulatory responses to the problems of failure to pay wages. She is also currently part of a research team coordinated by the University of British Columbia, researching Cross Cultural Dispute Resolution.

Sarah completed her PhD in 2004, entitled 'The Legal Field of Policing in China: Administrative Detention and Law Reform'. Her thesis looked at the development and legal reform of three administrative detention powers exercised by the Chinese public security organs; detention for education of prostitutes and clients of prostitutes, coercive drug rehabilitation and re-education through labour. A book based on this work, Legal Reform and Administrative Detention Powers in China, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.