Francesca Dominello

Francesca Dominello is a Lionel Murphy Scholar. She holds a combined BALLB degree from Macquarie University, and a LLM (Research) and PhD degree from UNSW.

In 2009 Francesca was awarded the CCH-ALTA 'Best Paper' Award for the paper she presented at the 2008 ALTA Conference titled 'Beyond Symbolism: Aboriginal Sovereignty and Native Title'. She has also been a legal consultant to LawTermFinder (lawtermfinder.mq.edu.au) which is an online termbank of words and phrases frequently used in Australian Family Law.    

Prior to her academic appointment at Macquarie University, Francesca practiced as a solicitor in the areas of native title law, personal injury law, and immigration law.

Francesca Dominello has a broad range of research interests with a focus on social justice issues faced by Indigenous peoples, women, and children. Her areas of research include Indigenous legal issues, family law and policy, human rights law, civil remedies, administrative and constitutional law, theories of justice and jurisprudence. Her LLM thesis focused on native title law in Australia and her PhD thesis focused on state apologies to Indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada. She is a co-author of The Family in Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017) which is focused on a range of family law and policy issues in Australia. She is also the author of State Apologies to Indigenous Peoples: Law. Politics, Ethics (Routledge, 2025), which seeks to reconceptulise apology making in ways to support Indigenous peoples' claims for justice. She has supervised students in a range of areas including Indigenous sovereignty, treaty and constitutional recognition; Indigenous lands and development issues in Australia, Asia and North America; the legal regulation of diverse families; family law and policy related to family violence, property, and children; human rights law in responding to human rights violations; women's rights at the intersection between sex and race; children's rights in family law, child protection and juvenile justice; and the rights of people with disability in law and policy.

• LAWS5020 - Family Law
• LAWS5018 - Indigenous People and the Law
• LAWS8066 - Indigenous Peoples and the Law