Associate Professor Claire Spivakovsky serves in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne as Associate Professor in Gender Studies within the School of Social and Political Sciences. She is also the Deputy Head of School (People and Culture). Spivakovsky completed her PhD in Criminology at the University of Melbourne in 2010 and holds a Bachelor's Degree with Honours from the same university. Her research focuses on socio-legal studies, particularly examining systems of confinement and control, disability law and policy, critical criminology, punishment and prisons, and the reintegration of ex-offenders. She explores the legacies of institutionalisation in community settings, restrictive practices in disability services, and intersections of disability, criminal justice, race, and gender.

Spivakovsky has authored the monograph Racialized Correctional Governance: The Mutual Constructions of Race and Criminal Justice (Ashgate, 2013), which analyzes the co-construction of racialized offenders and criminal justice practices. She edited The Legacies of Institutionalisation: Disability, Law and Policy in the 'Deinstitutionalised' Community (Hart Publishing, 2020), bringing together contributions on ongoing institutional harms post-deinstitutionalisation. Additionally, she co-authored Co-production and Criminal Justice (Routledge, 2021) with Diana Johns, Catherine Flynn, Maggie Hall, and Shelley Turner, addressing participatory approaches in justice systems. Her peer-reviewed articles include "Disability Law in a Pandemic: The Temporal Folds of Medico-legal Violence" (Social & Legal Studies, 2021), "A critical review of the research literature on disability and inclusion" (Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 2023), "A disability aware approach to torture prevention?" (Australian Journal of Human Rights, 2018, with Piers Gooding and Dinesh Wadiwel), "Governing freedom through risk: Locating the group home in the archipelago of confinement and control", and "Making the abject: problem-solving courts, addiction, mental illness and impairment". Spivakovsky has contributed to policy reports such as Preventing and Reducing Restrictive Practices (2023, with Linda Steele and Dinesh Wadiwel), African Australians with disability and the NDIS (2020), Women, disability and violence: Barriers to accessing justice, and Improving Educational Outcomes for Children with Disability in Victoria. Her scholarship influences reforms in disability rights, justice policy, and inclusion practices.

Professional Email: cspivakovsky@unimelb.edu.au