Rate My Professor Andrew Lawson

Dr Andrew Lawson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at the University of New England (UNE), Armidale, Australia. Possessing a distinctive combination of agricultural science and legal qualifications, he earned a PhD and Bachelor of Rural Science (Honours) from UNE, along with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Queensland. Lawson commenced his tenure at UNE in 2012, following professional engagements in environmental fields such as with the NGO Civic Exchange in Hong Kong, Land & Water Australia in Canberra, and a grassroots Landcare group in Holbrook, New South Wales. Within UNE's Law School, he has undertaken administrative roles including Higher Degree Research Coordinator and Academic Integrity Officer, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in recognition of his contributions.

Lawson's academic interests center on agricultural law, environmental and resources law, environment policy, soil governance, farmland stewardship and biodiversity conservation, institutional arrangements for sustainable agriculture, rural community sustainability, rural responses to climate challenges, and gender issues in farm transition and succession, including the interrelationship between regulation and voluntary stewardship programs. His key publications feature peer-reviewed articles like ‘The “Dreaded” Daughter-In-Law in Australian Farm Business Succession’ (2024, Journal of Rural Studies), ‘Changing Scripts: Gender, Family Farm Succession and Increasing Farm Values in Australia’ (2023, Journal of Rural Studies), and ‘Money, Soils and Stewardship–Creating a More Fruitful Relationship?’ (2022, Soil Security). As co-editor and author, he contributed chapters to Non-doctrinal Research Methods in Environmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2023), covering sustaining environmental law research teams, bibliometric approaches, and methodological challenges. Other outputs include the commissioned report ‘Transition & Succession in the NSW Dairy Industry’ (2023, Dairy NSW and Dairy Australia) and his PhD thesis ‘Farmers, Voluntary Stewardship Programs, and Collaborative Natural Resource Governance in Rural Australia’ (2016).