meeting | The Australian Dispute Resolution Research Network

The Faculty of Law, Monash University is proud to host the 13^th Australian Dispute Resolution Research Network Roundtable on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 November 2025 at the Monash University Clayton Campus (approx. 30 minutes from Melbourne CBD). There are many public transport options to Monash from inner city Melbourne and we will share details for attendees from afar.

The Roundtable is an opportunity to present work in progress and receive feedback and critique in a supportive and friendly environment, and to network with leading dispute resolution academics. We have honed our format over the years and will adopt the following approach:

a focus on work in progress (ie, it’s not a conference, but a collaborative workshop around a table of supportive peers)
a limited number of papers selected for in-depth discussion
there is at least one appointed commentator for each paper
attendance is limited to people who are presenting or commentating upon papers
full papers must be submitted for distribution one month prior to the roundtable
publication of a blog post based upon the paper is expected for all presenters

Anyone working in civil justice and any form of dispute resolution including mediation, conciliation, negotiation and arbitration is encouraged to attend. Scholars from outside Australia are also welcome to attend.

Early Career Researchers and PhD students are particularly encouraged to participate. We are a kind and supportive group of scholars and are very welcoming of newcomers.

The call for papers will be released in June or July.

Queries can be directed to the convenor and co-President of the ADRRN: Becky Batagol (Monash University) Becky.Batagol@monash.edu.

This roundtable will be supported by the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation

So, I’m excited!

Along with 13 other members of the ADR Research Network, we have been meeting in the glorious sunshine at Queensland University of Technology’s Garden Point Campus this week. Meeting for real, in person. With coffee in hand and fuelled by victuals kindly provided by QUT law school, we have be discussing the most difficult aspects of dispute resolution theory and practice.

The ADR Research Network was founded in 2012 by a group of dispute resolution academics from across Australia. We live and work in the far corners of this big country, from Hobart to Townsville, from the Gold Coast to Bundoora. Some of us are mediators, some lawyers, some legal philosophers, educators and we all live and breathe dispute resolution. We had all met at conferences before and read each others’ work over the years and a few of us have even written together. But we wanted to do more than just see each other occasionally and referee each others’ work: we wanted to engage with each other on what we are working on, we wanted to debate the hard stuff, we wanted to share a laugh.

As well as running this blog, we have decided to write a book together, based around the theme of changing professional identities for both lawyers and mediators in dispute resolution. The increased use of ADR and institutionalisation of processes such as mediation challenge us to rethink the role of lawyers and mediators in dispute resolution. Questions arise such as is mediation now a profession? Is there a single mediation community or are there multiple communities of mediation practice? How do we train lawyers to achieve justice in mediation? What is the basis of an ethical decision making process for mediators? How best do we define mediation and is that important? Should neuroscience affect mediator practice?

The most exciting thing about our book project is that it is so collaborative in nature. Each chapter will be written by a single author but with extensive feedback from the group as a whole and from individual authors. This will create a highly reflective and tightly structured collection that we hope will be central to understanding contemporary dispute resolution practice.

We are still writing and putting together a book proposal. To give you a sense of what we are all writing about, here’s a way to see the tweets we have made over the past few days at the workshop. We have been using the hashtag #adrresearchnetwork. These tweets summarise the ideas raised by each author in our chapters and some of our thoughts around the table as a group.

Stay tuned …