Postgraduate Research Students

Anita Foerster

Anita Foerster completed a double degree in Geography and Law (Honours) at the Australian National University. She joined the law school as a PhD candidate in 2005, researching the law, policy and practice of environmental water allocation. Anita's thesis is entitled 'Law, policy and practice for ecologically sustainable water allocation and management? An analysis of institutional developments to provide for environmental water needs in the Murray-Darling Basin (NSW and Victoria), 1994-2008' and is co-supervised by Lee Godden and Jacqueline Peel.

Samuel Alexander

Samuel Alexander has an LL.B from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and an LL.M (hons) from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. After graduating Sam practiced employment law in Christchurch, New Zealand, before joining Melbourne Law School in 2006 as a PhD student. Sam’s thesis is entitled "Voluntary Simplicity: Towards a Post-growth Theory of Property” (supervisors Lee Godden and Jenny Beard). Sam has also founded the Life Poets' Simplicity Collective (www.simplicitycollective.com) which is a grass roots environmental organization dedicated to creatively promoting and celebrating sustainable culture.

Takele Bulto

Takele Bulto holds LLB and MA degrees from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and an LLM degree from University of Pretoria, South Africa. Takele worked as a judge and lecturer in Ethiopia and a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria. He also worked as Programme Coordinator for Child Rights and Child Rights Programming in Eastern and Central African Regional Office of Save the Children, Sweden. Just before taking up his PhD studies at Melbourne Law School Takele was a Legal Officer in a PanAfrican Pioneer NGO. Takele’s thesis is entitled 'The Imperatives of Extraterritorial Application of the Human Right to Water: A Case Study of the Nile Basin' and explores the operationalisation of the emerging human right to water in Africa (supervisors Jacqueline Peel and Carolyn Evans).

Yoriko Otomo

Yoriko Otomo has worked in several government and non-government environmental organisations, and has contributed to publications relating to sustainable development, environmental law and humanitarian issues. Her doctoral thesis on The Changing Landscapes of Risk (supervised by Anne Orford) seeks to develop a semiology of law through a poststructural feminist analysis of key texts within the law of occupation and international economic law. Yoriko is teaching the undergraduate Environmental Law subject at Melbourne Law School.