Associate Professor Madeline Taylor is an Australian Research Council (ARC) EC Industry Fellow, Co-Lead of the Energy, Communities, and Market Regulation Stream of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, Honorary Associate at the Sydney Environment Institute and Member of the Sydney Institute of Agriculture.

A/Prof Taylor is an expert in the socio-legal dimensions of energy transitions, with a particular focus on scaling up energy and decarbonisation technologies in rural and remote areas. As chief investigator or co-investigator, her research has attracted over AUD 7.7 million in competitive research funding. Her work advances novel comparative analysis of energy regulation and policy in transition, examining the governance of energy and the distribution of rights and benefits among the state, energy developers, landholders, and communities.

Madeline is an Australian Research Council (ARC) EC Industry Fellow (2025-2028) working with her Industry Partners NSW Department of Primary Industries and Spark Renewable on their project entitled "The Foundational Australian Agrivoltaics Regulation Model (FAARM) Project". 

She is a CI in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project "Just Transmission" (2025 - 2028) led by A/Prof Jonathan Pickering alongside Professor David Schlosberg and A/Prof Amanda Tattersall. The project aims to develop strategies for a just and coherent approach to constructing new electricity transmission infrastructure in Australia.

Madeline is a CI in the $5,970,165 Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry Future Drought Fund Project "Novel Energy and Evaporative Storage Technologies for Irrigators (NEESTI)" (2025 - 2030) led by Ag Econ with Macquarie University and the University of Southern Queensland. The project analyses economic, environmental, regulatory, and policy opportunities to enhance drought resilience in five irrigated agricultural sectors by incorporating floating solar photovoltaics (FPV) on storage dams across cotton, sugarcane, pecans, wine, and rice.

Madeline was awarded the 2022 Faculty of Arts Early Career Researcher Prize and was a 2023 Highly Commended Finalist for the Vice Chancellor's Research Excellence Early Career Researcher Award in recognition of her research and publications concerning solar energy development siting on complex land uses. Madeline is one of the four 2023 Clean Energy Council Chloe Munro Scholarship for Transformational Leadership - Executive Ready Scholars.

To date, Madeline has published widely on socio-legal aspects of the energy transition in leading and impactful energy journals and publication outlets.  In 2024, she was named as a Finalist in the 2024 Australian Financial Review Higher Education Awards in the Emerging Leadership category. In 2023, she received the Lawyers Weekly 2023 Women in Law Academic/Researcher of the Year Award and the 2023 Women in Law Excellence Award as the highest-scoring overall award winner and is the first academic to have won the award.

Madeline works with industry stakeholders across energy, agriculture, and regional communities in her role on the Management Committee of RE-Alliance on questions relating to the energy transition, property rights, and community-based governance. She is Co-Lead of the IUCN IWCEL Climate Change Law SG Inclusive Energy Transformation Cluster, The International Association for Impact Assessment,  Co-Editor in Chief of OGEL Energy Law Journal, and is a contributing author to the Lexis Nexis flagship energy law practitioner text Energy and Resources Law in Australia.

She regularly advises industry, government, industry and NGOs on issues relating to the energy transition, energy regulation and policy and has provided expert submissions and reports to the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), the NSW Government, World Bank, NOPSEMA, and the Independent Planning Commission. She is a regular contributor to domestic and international media outlets on energy law and policy and has been featured as an expert on ABC's 7:30 Report and Landline.

Madeline was awarded the 2022 Faculty of Arts Learning and Teaching Early Career Award and the 2023 Vice Chancellor's Learning and Teaching Early Career Award in recognition of her embedding climate change and other critical perspectives of commercial law in her teaching. She has diverse teaching experience in the areas of commercial law, energy law, property law and corporate law. Prior to joining Macquarie, Madeline held positions at the University of Sydney, Bond University, and the University of Queensland.

Dr Taylor's research interests concern interdisciplinary aspects of the nexus between energy and the law in facilitating the energy transition. Her research areas of interest include:

• Energy Law
• Energy Policy
• Agricultural Policy
• Agricultural Law
• Commercial Law
• Property Law
• Comparative Law
• Socio-Legal Regulation

Dr Taylor is open to consultations regarding prospective Higher Degree Research (Masters, PhD) and Postdoctoral project primary or associate supervision in the following subject areas:

• Energy Regulation and Policy: Regulatory responses to the energy transition; regulating new energy technologies onshore and offshore; energy storage; conflicts over resource use; energy justice; comparative energy law.
• Land protection and planning law: Impact assessments for energy projects; development approvals; land use planning for energy; property law tensions and landholder interests; co-location of multiple land use interests; agricultural land protection
• Commercial Energy Law: Leasing and licencing for energy development; energy governance and energy security; responses to impacts of climate change and energy resilience.

If you are interested in undertaking postgraduate or postdoctoral research with Dr Taylor please familiarise yourself with Macquarie University's HDR programs, and contact her via email.

Dr Taylor has taught across a range of subjects including energy law, commercial law, property law and corporate law.

At Macquarie University, she previously convened the following units of study:

• Foundations of Commercial Law LAWS5021
• Commercial Law LAWS8023