Professor Mark Lunney

Mark Lunney is a Professor in the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. He trained as a solicitor in Brisbane before obtaining an LLM from the University of Cambridge. Between 1991-2003 he was Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader at the School of Law, King's College London. He was an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of New England between 2003-2011 and from 2011-2012 he was Professor and Director of Research in the ANU College of Law. He returned to the University of New England as a Professor in 2012 and retains a connection there since his reappointment to the Dickson Poon School of Law in 2021.

His research interests are the law of tort, and the history of the common law and legal profession. He has published extensively on the law of torts in both Australia and the United Kingdom (see, for example, Barker, Cane, Lunney & Trindade, The Law of Torts in Australia (5th edn, 2012) and Lunney & Oliphant, Tort Law: Text and Materials (5th edn, 2013). He is also a contributing editor to the practitioners’ reference work Tort Law (3rd edn, 2015, Butterworths Common Law Series). He is the inaugural Australian member, and a member of the Executive Committee, of the World Tort Law Society, Junior Vice-President and Council member of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History, a Fellow of the Australian Centre for Private Law at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, a member of the European Centre for Tort and Insurance Law based in Vienna, an International Associate of the Brazilian Institute on Tort Law, and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Australian Centre for Intellectual Property in Agriculture. In 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. He is also a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland and the Senior Courts of England.

Membership of professional bodies

• Selden Society
• Stair Society
• American Society for Legal History
• Welsh Legal History Society
• Francis Forbes Society for Australia and New Zealand
• Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society
• Australian Historical Association
• Society for Legal Scholars
• The Law Society of England and Wales
• World Tort Law Society
• Brazilian Institute on Tort Law
• Australian Centre for Private Law

PhD supervisions

Yes, Mark is accepting PhD supervisions.

Research interests

Professor Lunney's research interests lie at the interface of private law (primarily the law of tort), the history of English private law in the context of empire (especially Australia), and comparative law. In particular, his recent work has focused on the relationship between constructions of (white) national identity and its impact on the self-understanding of colonial and dominion lawyers and its place in constructing the boundary between acceptable innovation and illegitimate departures from English common law. Professor Lunney's doctrinal work concentrates on explanation, analysis and critical commentary on of all aspects of the law of tort in England and in Australian jurisdictions and, through his work with the World Tort Law Society, in a variety of other common and civil law jurisdictions.

Teaching interests

• Tort Law
• Legal History