Professor Kathy Bowrey
Affiliation: UNSW Law & Justice
Discipline: Law and legal studies
Year elected: 2022
What initially drew you to your field of study?
I had a law degree and also friends and flat mates who were artists making experimental digital music, artworks and videos for crushingly small audiences of fellow travellers. Lawyers kept telling them they had to stop because they were infringing copyright when they used samples and cut up techniques that were the equivalent of things Dadists and William Burroughs used to do. So I began to study the history of art and copyright.
What question or issue, in your field,keeps you awake at night?
The integration of AI into teaching and research in ways which displace scholarly values and supercharges the spread of misinformation and unreliable research. Why are universities pushing this without research into fitness for purpose? It is already creating so much busy work and stress for academics to try to manage the fallout. The copyright issues are huge. Managerial decisions seem very poorly thought through.
Tell us about a recent moment of motivation or inspiration?
I’m working on an historical piece about early colonial copyright and Empire. I thought it might be very dry and the material too thin. The people involved are so full of life. It is hilarious—the German American star breaking and entering to rip up carte de visites because the photos being sold are being sold too cheaply and made them look ridiculous; the actress threatening to sue after being stabbed because someone forgot to blunt the sword; a fight over the profits over a benefit for the Melbourne Society of the Educated Poor, and copyright infringement of course.
What are you most proud of?
It’s a little thing in academic terms but it meant a lot to someone else—being able to help David Unaipon’s descendant Kym Kropinyerri work out why his uncle struggled to make money from his inventions and us collaborating on an article so Kym could go on the record and in his own words talk back to the racists who regularly tell him Unaipon was not anything special and never achieved anything.
Where is your ‘happy’ place?
An uninterrupted research day assembling my puzzle pieces into an interesting shape, and even better, sitting in the coffee shop with my pen working over the first draft.