Dr Laura Smith-Khan grew up in a small town on the North Coast NSW. After the HSC, she was the only student in her year to move to Sydney to study. Fascinated by languages, she enrolled in a BA Languages at Sydney University.

Her studies eventually led her to the law, and some exciting interdisciplinary research opportunities and achievements. Her work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the Max Crawford Medal by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, which created opportunities for her to advocate for making higher education and research more accessible to people in regional areas.  Dr Smith-Khan spoke with UNE Communications about her work and her recent move to UNE.

Tell us a little about yourself, including your professional background and coming to UNE. 
I was very interested in learning different languages and ended up taking classes in eight different languages during my degree, in addition to studying politics and international relations. It was only towards then end of that degree that I became interested in studying law, so I went on to do a Grad LLB, again at Sydney uni.

I absolutely loved uni, and researching and writing, so just after finishing my law degree, I was very lucky to get the opportunity to work as a research assistant on a big new project about disability in forced migration. That was a three-year, full time position, involving fieldwork in six countries – a truly life-changing experience. I had great mentoring and opportunities to publish. During those three years, I also completed my Grad Dip in Legal Practice to get admitted as a lawyer, and completed a Master in Applied Linguistics as a remote student. The combination of this work experience and extra study led me to doctoral research and then a prestigious research fellowship at the intersections of language and law, and this remains my primary area of interest: understanding how linguistic diversity can be a factor in access to justice.

What does your current role at UNE entail? 
I joined UNE earlier this year as a Senior Lecturer in Law, which involves conducting my own research, supervising research candidates, and teaching in the School of Law.

What is excites you about your job? 
I’m just as passionate about my research as I always have been. Some days it’s hard to believe I get to do this as a job. It’s also fantastic to be able to share my research interests and passion for social justice with my students. I’ve always found ways to integrate my research into my teaching. Right now I’m particularly excited about being back living and working in regional NSW and want to explore more opportunities to contribute my expertise in my local area.

In your opinion, what is justice? Do you think justice and law are one and the same?
Justice and law are distinct concepts: Ideally, law is an instrument for justice, but it can sometimes inadvertently result in injustice as in some of the situations I research: where systems and processes are not designed to allow for the equal participation of particular groups or individuals, for example linguistic minorities or people with a disability.  And in some cases, law can even be unjust by design – there are both historical and more recent examples of this from all around the world.

What is the most challenging part of your job and how might you work through this? 
For anyone who’s really passionate about what they do, maintaining a work-life balance can be tricky. It can be hard to switch off and pace yourself. I had the chance to reflect on how best to achieve this balance in a speech at my PhD graduation (watch this video of the speech to see a surprise twist). Living where I do, in Northern NSW, surrounded by beautiful nature, and close to community and family and friends is very helpful.

Career-wise, where do you see your current role taking you? 
I’d like to continue building my research expertise, and building my research community and networks, both locally and further afield. In my teaching, I feel much the same: I love taking up all the valuable opportunities that we have as university employees to develop professionally as a teacher, drawing on education research, and also conducting my own research in this area to contribute to this field.

What is one piece of career advice you might offer others? 
You don’t need to have all the answers and lock in a career path at the age of 15 or 17 or 25. I certainly didn’t know exactly what my future would look like at any of those points in time! Work hard and follow your interests and be open to these changing over time.

Whatever you are doing in your life, find supportive people who share your enthusiasm and find ways to build community: you will benefit from the support of others and will also grow as you contribute and offer the support you can too. Having supportive supervisors, mentors and peers has been the key to both a successful and very rich and rewarding journey for me so far.  For example, since my PhD, the Language on the Move research community has been a huge support for me and I’ve made some amazing friends through it. It has also led me to work with others to develop our own communities, for example, the Law and Linguistics Interdisciplinary Researchers’ Network that I set up and run with a colleague.

What do you enjoy doing outside of your work? 
I’m a voracious reader – outside of work, I need light reading, so you’ll usually find me reading some kind of fiction and nothing too serious. I also love getting out into nature with family – bonus if it involves a dip in some kind of water.

Is there anything you would like to include about yourself or your role at UNE? 
I’m really enjoying my time at UNE so far and it’s demonstrating to me how much scope there is for us to connect, study and build community remotely, across sometimes quite vast distances. I love to stay connected online and you can find me on BlueSky, Twitter and LinkedIn.