Ben Hightower

Ben Hightower is a Lecturer and Director of the Master of Laws (LLM) program at Macquarie Law School.

Ben’s research sits at the intersection of law, the humanities, and socio-legal studies. Drawing on insights from fields such as religion, literature, art, music, and culture, he explores how law might be understood, experienced, and reimagined. His work is particularly concerned with legal liminality or the threshold spaces where people find themselves suspended between legal categories, jurisdictions, or forms of belonging.

A central focus of his scholarship examines how these liminal legal conditions are experienced by marginalised communities, especially refugees and asylum seekers. He also researches crimmigration, border governance, and the criminalisation of dissent in liberal democracies. More broadly, his work engages questions of law, power, imagination, and social justice.

Ben completed his PhD in Law at the Legal Intersections Research Centre, University of Wollongong. His doctoral thesis, Refugee Limbo, developed the concept of legal limbo as a framework for understanding prolonged experiences of legal uncertainty among refugees and asylum seekers.

He has presented his research at universities and conferences across Australia, Europe, and Asia. Ben is a member of the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia and serves as Australian Advisor on the Editorial Board of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.

Ben is passionate about education and student experience. His teaching philosophy aims to create strategies, methods and experiences that foster authentic and enduring connections to curriculum and learning.

Current and Past Teaching in Macquarie Law School:

LEX101 – Law, Human Rights and Global Governance 

LAWS1000 – Foundations of Law

LAWS1010 – Introduction to Law and Social Justice

LAWS2000 – International Law

LAWS2050 – Crime, Policy and Governance

LAWS2060 – The Politics of Human Rights Law

LAWS5079 – Refugees and Migration

LAWS5080/8094 – Human Rights and Moral Dilemmas

LAWS5078 PACE: Clinics and Projects