In touch with… Maria Giannacopoulos

FiT sat down with Dr Maria Giannacopoulos, who has dedicated her life to improving outcomes for Australia’s Indigenous peoples and asylum seekers through research that boldly examines and confronts our nation’s most contentious human rights issues. 

What made you decide to pursue a research career in law and cultural theory?

Going to see U2 play in Adelaide recently I remembered my teenage years when I first watched them play in Sydney. At the time I was very inspired by their human rights activism and I decided that I would become a human rights lawyer.

I grew up in an ‘ethnic’, working class area of Sydney and, as the child of migrants, no one in our family had ever been to university. The careers adviser laughed when I told her I wanted to study law.  She also thought it was ridiculous that I wanted to drop maths to maximise my grades!  I did get into a law degree but was also studying English Literature, which exposed me to postcolonial literatures and migrant writing like that of now acclaimed Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas. Studying law alongside cultural, racial and power questions was eye opening, empowering and shaped me as an interdisciplinary scholar from the start.

As I studied law, a very elite discipline, I knew being a lawyer wasn’t going to be for me. But I stuck with it because I was fascinated by the way law shapes our entire social world. I began to fully appreciate how negotiating power and inequality demands continual engagement with law.

What is your current research about?

Like most academics I have several research projects running simultaneously. But in all my work I look at the coloniality of Australian law in two overlapping fields: Aboriginal sovereignty and refugee and asylum studies. I’m currently writing a book about sovereign debt, austerity and the endurance of colonial power. I’m connecting for the very first time Australia’s hidden sovereign debt crisis and comparing this to the well-known sovereign debt crisis in Greece. I’m thinking about austerity itself as a form of colonialism or imperialism.  My work is critical and theoretical, and I develop new conceptual ways of understanding persistent social problems.

I have also just finished co-editing a special issue of Globalizations with Professor Biko Agozino on the theme of ‘Law, Love and Decolonisation’.  Here we have collected a diverse range of papers including poetry from Behrouz Boochani who has after many years become free from detention in Manus Prison where the Australian Government has systematically denied freedom to those seeking asylum.  In this project we argue that an ethic of love is needed in law and policy making to undo the violence of the state experienced by so many vulnerable populations.

I have also recently written about the persistence of Aboriginal deaths in custody. This is unacceptable in 2019 but the deaths continue because Australia has not effectively decolonised.

Where do you see opportunities for improvement in Australia’s refugee policy?

There can be no question that the practice of locking up refugees on Pacific Islands prisons or turning back boats onto dangerous waters must stop. As a voting public, we are contributing to what will be looked back upon as a history of torture on Pacific Islands camps. Australian citizens must stop consenting to these practices being undertaken in our name and so allowing political parties, both Labour and Liberal, to win elections on such issues. Trying to inform refugee policy is perhaps too narrow. We need whole new ways of understanding who or what power it is that denies asylum to refugees. If Australia is a country built despite Indigenous sovereignty never having been ceded, then is it for the colonial state to say welcome (or not) to those seeking asylum?  Many Indigenous peoples have expressed solidarity with refugees because they have experienced similar racism at the hands of the state.

If your research could inform just one significant change in Australia, what would you like to see?

I would like for over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples – leading to destruction of families, culture and often suicide or deaths in custody – to be understood for what it is; systematic racism and ongoing colonialism. If this occurs, then decriminalisation of petty offences, usually to do with systematic poverty, can be undertaken. I am pro-prison abolition in the sense that prisons hurt the most vulnerable peoples in our world, that is poor people, Indigenous people and refugees.

Can you share a highlight or proud moment in your career?

In 2019, I had my first TV appearance on our national broadcaster the ABC speaking about the problems and challenges related to the recognition of Indigenous peoples within the Australian Constitution.  Alongside this I have been published on ABC Online, a number of times on refugee and Indigenous questions.  It is rewarding to have alternative and more far reaching platforms from which to bring academic research to life. This helps shapes national conversations and for many of us this is the reason we do what we do.

Can you describe what a ‘normal’ day could look like for you?

A normal day always includes good coffee and music while I work at my desk.

I could be preparing lectures, researching, reading, thinking (!) writing to students or colleagues or writing a part of my book or research article. Then there are days that require travel for conferences, writing conference papers, networking with colleagues and even quick responses to media on unfolding news stories.

I was recently in Ubud, Bali while on leave and couldn’t say no when I was contacted by ABC radio to conduct a phone interview on the planned deportation of a Sri Lankan family by the Australian Government. Academic work has a way of following you around!

 

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