Cathy Sherry is a Professor in Macquarie Law School and Executive Member of Smart Green Cities. She is a leading international expert in land law, with a particular focus on high density development. Her book Strata Title Property Rights: Private governance of multi-owned properties (Routledge, 2017) is the first academic monograph on Australian strata title. It has been cited by the Privy Council in O’Connor v The Proprietors, Strata Plan No.51 (Turks and Caicos Island) [2017] UKPC 45, the New South Wales Court of Appeal in Cooper v The Owners –Strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250, and extensively in academic literature in Australia and overseas. Professor Sherry's research focuses on the complex legal, economic and social relationships created by collectively owned land. She has published in highly ranked, peer-reviewed journals on multiple aspects of strata title, including the application of discrimination law to bodies corporate, the limits of small group autonomy in liberal democracies, and United States condominium and homeowner association law.

Professor Sherry regularly advises governments, domestically and internationally, on the laws governing multi-owned properties. She was a member of the United Kingdom Law Commission Technical Committee for the Reform of Commonhold from 2018-2020, and was engaged by the International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) to reform the Fijian Unit Titles Act 1985 in 2021. She has advised governments in Asia, the Pacific and Middle East. In 2012, Professor Sherry was employed by the Administration of Norfolk Island to write a White Paper on the introduction of strata title to the Island, leading to the Community Title Act 2015 (NI).

Professor Sherry's research has led to significant law reform in New South Wales, including the removal of prohibitions on companion animals in strata schemes. She co-authored the Outcomes Report of the Working Party for the Prevention of Children Falling from Residential Buildings, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, 2011, which resulted in the enactment of the Strata Schemes Management Amendment (Child Safety Devices) Act 2013. 

As a result of her research on high density development, Professor Sherry has a particular interest in liveable cities, and the importance of green infrastructure, including urban agriculture. In her previous academic role, she was the Team Lead of UNSW Urban Growers, a cross disciplinary group of academics from engineering, art and design, social and biological sciences, medicine, and the built environment that created food growing spaces on a high density campus.  She convened and co-taught Food Law, a course which introduced students to the problems of modern food systems, including supply chains, food security, intellectual property law, water law, GMO and agriculture's impact on climate change. Professor Sherry taught students to grow their own food, to increase their food literacy, and their understanding of the precarity of food production. She has published research on the role of university food gardens in augmenting graduate environmental literacy.

Professor Sherry teaches the compulsory property and equity courses that are required for admission to legal practice. Her courses are innovative and practical, focussing on genuine student understanding. Her online site for land law won a Legal Innovation Index award in 2015.

Professor Sherry has developed a number of original electives at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, including electives on land use and food law. 

In 2017, Professor Sherry was named Academic of the Year in the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards. She was a recipient of a NSW Department of Training and Education and Australian College of Educators' Award in 2007, and a Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2006. 

Professor Sherry is available to supervise higher degrees in the areas of land law, strata title, urban agriculture and food systems.