Dr Ashley Pearson | UniSC | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Dr Ashley Pearson joined the School of Law and Society as a law lecturer in 2020 and has previously worked at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology in a variety of teaching and research roles.

Ashley was awarded the University Medal at Griffith University for her undergraduate studies and was also one of four Australian recipients of the competitive monbuklagakusho scholarship in 2015 which enabled her to conduct PhD research at Kobe University, Japan.

Ashley's research focuses on the nexus between law and culture, with a particular interest in the tracings of law within and through video games, transmedial narratives, fandom, and technology. She has presented at the premier conferences in her field throughout Australasia, and publishes regularly and widely within interdisciplinary legal circles. After completing her PhD in August 2019, Ashley is currently working to adapt her PhD thesis, 'Legal Personhood in Video Games, Canonical Media and Fandom' into a monograph.

As an eager collaborator, Ashley was the lead editor on the Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture edited collection published with Routledge in 2018 and is currently one of the editors of the Playing Law: A Jurisprudence of Video Games and Virtual Realities collection with its anticipated publication in 2021. She also occupies an editorial role as a book review editor for the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law.