Rate My Professor Mareike Riedel

Dr. Mareike Riedel is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, and a member of the Ethics and Agency Research Centre. She is a sociolegal scholar whose research explores the intersections of law, religion, and race. Her work addresses law and religion in multicultural societies, religious and racial discrimination, the cultural history of secular law, and the role of law in combatting and perpetuating antisemitism and Islamophobia. Additional research lines examine approaches to Islamophobia in anti-discrimination law and the regulation of artistic expression in constitutional law. Riedel completed her PhD in sociolegal studies at the Australian National University in 2019. Prior to Macquarie University, she held postdoctoral research fellowships at the Australian National University, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity from September 2018 to December 2020, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Since 2022, she has served as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance and returned in 2024 as a Visiting Fellow to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her research has been funded by the Max Planck Society, the Freilich Institute for the Study of Bigotry at ANU, the ANU Gender Institute, and the State Government of Saxony, Germany.

Riedel authored the monograph Law and Jewish Difference: Ambivalent Encounters, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Society, International Journal of Law in Context, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Griffith Law Review, and Identities. Key publications include 'Religion and race: the need for an intersectional approach' (2025, co-authored with Vanessa Rau), 'Islamophobia, racial discrimination law, and the question of self-identification' (2025), and 'An uneasy encounter: male circumcision, Jewish difference, and German law'. She teaches units including Foundations of Law (LAWS1000, LAWS8001) and Human Rights and Moral Dilemmas (LAWS5080). In 2023, she was a finalist in the Academic Staff Awards in the groundbreakers category and the Vice-Chancellor's Learning and Teaching Awards.