Laura Petersen

Laura Petersen is a writer and researcher at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at the Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne. Her interests are cross-disciplinary, combining approaches to jurisprudence with literature and memorial and visual art. Her recently submitted PhD thesis focuses on legal, literary and artistic practices of restitution in post-Holocaust Germany. Laura won the 2021 Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature and Justice run by the University of Texas.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.