Chelsea Wallis

Chelsea is a DPhil candidate and Ramsay Scholar, focussing on the role of human rights law and feminist jurisprudence in addressing domestic abuse in Australia, under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Herring. Formerly Managing Editor of the Oxford Human Rights Hub, she teaches at University College, Oxford and the University of Sydney, and serves as an external supervisor for the Magdalen College School Waynflete Program. Supported by a scholarship from Jesus College, Chelsea completed the BCL with Distinction in 2021, receiving the Law Faculty Prize for best performance in Advanced & Comparative Criminal Law on the BCL. In 2022 she received the Ann Kennedy Graduate Scholarship in Law from Lady Margaret Hall and was appointed as PGR Representative to the Law Faculty Equality and Diversity Committee, also serving on the Law Board in this capacity. Since 2021, Chelsea has been the Graduate Teaching Assistant for the BCL options Comparative Human Rights and Comparative Equality Law, and has served as Equalities Officer for the LMH MCR. 

Chelsea contributed to the 2024 Oxford Human Rights Hub submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education and Academic Freedom, and served as Research Assistant to Prof Sandra Fredman and Assoc Prof Shreya Atrey for the edited collection Exponential Inequalities (published Feb 2023). She has also been Research Assistant to Assoc Prof Barbara Havelková on gender equality in the UK and EU; RA to Dr Naomi Lott on children's rights and intersectionality; RA to Prof Jonathan Herring and Dr Marie Tidball on disability law and policy; and RA to Prof Imogen Goold on medical law and ethics. Formerly a member of the Oxford Pro Bono Publico Executive Committee, Chelsea contributed to a comparative report on the Right to Early Childhood Education for OPBP in 2022. She serves on the Editorial Review Board for the interdisciplinary journal Gifted and Talented International and is a member of the Academic Skills Special Interest Group at the University of Oxford. Chelsea has presented her research on neurodiversity and education at the 2023 Oxford Learning and Teaching Symposium, the Women and Worlds of Learning Conference at Magdalen College, and at the Royal Anthropological Institute Workshop on Adolescence.

In 2022 Chelsea was admitted to the Graduate Research Student Residency Scheme in the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and began convening the Bonavero Graduate Research Forum. She has also convened the Feminist Jurisprudence and Criminal Law Discussion Groups, as well as the Children's Rights Network within the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, and is an active member of the Childhood Law and Policy Network housed at Queen Mary University of London. As an Autistic and chronically ill person, Chelsea publishes widely on neurodiversity, disability, and the right to educational equality. In 2021 Chelsea received the D L Chapman Memorial Prize from Jesus College for her poetry collection 'Apricity' and was shortlisted by Bosporus Press.

Alongside the DPhil, Chelsea was a Visiting Doctoral Student with the Oxford Centre for Life Writing (OCLW), completing a part-time doctorate in English Literature through the University of Sydney which explores how Victorian women writers created intellectual communities outside of the academy through networks of letter writing and collaboration. This expands on her MA (English) dissertation, recently published in Brontë Studies, for which she was named Vice-Chancellor's Scholar 2022 from the University of New England. Chelsea co-convenes the Feminist Book Club at LMH and contributes to the Beaufort Writing Salon. She has been a Choral Scholar at Worcester College and St John's College, was Poetry Editor for the Oxford Public Philosophy journal, and has had works of prose and poetry published in The Turl, Cultivate, Womankind, and Storyboard. Chelsea previously served as Youth Ambassador for Oxfam Australia, was a member of the Australian delegation to the Harvard Model United Nations Conference, and was a Senior Judge for The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition. She is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

Prior to studying at Oxford, Chelsea completed undergraduate degrees in Law and International Business, alongside graduate studies in Politics and International Relations; International Economics and Finance; French and Latin language; Mathematics; and English Literature. Chelsea has two University Medals and a Chancellor's Medal, and received the Una Prentice Award for the highest achieving graduating law student in the state of Queensland. She was the youngest graduate of her university, aged seventeen. Chelsea holds a Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary), and spent three years teaching English, French, Latin and Philosophy at a boarding school in Australia, where she also coordinated Gifted & Talented programmes. 

Chelsea's research interests centre on issues of complex social policy and the rights of groups traditionally elided by the law, including women and children. Her undergraduate thesis, published in the Journal of Law & Medicine, investigated how dynamic socio-political conditions interact with attempts to legalise voluntary euthanasia in Australia, drawing on a comparative study of Dutch and Belgian law reform experiences. More recently, she has written on contemporary feminist jurisprudence for the Oxford Law Faculty and on feminism, neurodiversity, and disability rights for Amicus Curiae, the Oxford Human Rights Hub and Oxford Neurodiversity Network. Chelsea's DPhil explores how relational autonomy, intersectionality, and capabilities can inform our understanding of domestic abuse, focussing on Indigenous Australian communities and the experiences of women with disabilities.