Esther Erlings is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School and a member of two Macquarie consilience centres; Lifespan Health and Wellbeing, and Smart Green Cities, for which she is the MCR Lead for sustainable cities.

Esther’s research concentrates on family and health law, human rights (inlcuding at local government levels via child- and age-friendly cities) and tort law (mostly within institutional care contexts), with the occasional outing to aspects of trade law. She is particularly interested in decision-making ability, expressed as both internal ability (capacity or competence), and external ability. The latter includes, for example, access to decision-making under substitute decision-making regimes like parental responsibility or adult guardianship, as well as access to dispute resolution processes such as courts or mediation.

At present, Esther is working on direct parent-child mediation, restrictive practices/deprivation of liberty of persons under guardianship in (aged) care facilities, and child- and age-friendly cities and nature-connectedness. Esther is also one of the co-authors of the 6th edition of 'Ethics and Law for Australian Nurses' (expected 2026, CUP).

Esther is the President of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand (LSAANZ), a lifetime member of the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA), and holds membership of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), LAWASIA, and the Hong Kong Family Law Association (HKFLA).

Prior to joining Macquarie, Esther worked at Flinders University (South Australia) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Grant-funded Projects:

• Blue and Green with Warming Stripes: Experiences of Sustainable Child Friendly Cities in the Greater Sydney Area (Smart Green Cities). Project lead, with Prof Maria Kangas and A/Prof Paul Beggs.
• Comparative Study of Administrative Dispute Settlement and Access to Justice (University of Diponegoro Join Research Scheme). Together with A/Prof Aju Putrijanti and A/Prof Anggita Doramia Lumbanraja.
• Mandatory Voluntary Assisted Dying Training for Doctors (Tender, Department for Health and Wellbeing, SA). Together with Dr Caroline Phelan (Project lead), Dr Deirdre Morgan, Dr Koshila Kumar, Dr Michael Zhou and A/Prof Grant Davies.
• ‘To Detain… A Protected Person’: Understanding and Addressing the Implications of The Public Advocate v C, B for the South Australian Legal System and Care Providers (The Law Foundation of South Australia Inc.). Project lead, with A/Prof Laura Grenfell.
• But Can They “Participate Effectively”? – A Qualitative Study of Children’s Competence Determinations in Parent-Child Mediation (Flinders University). Sole investigator.