| Alpana Roy | |
| Thesis1 Title: | A postcolonial analysis of intellectual property law |
Alpana Roy is a New Zealand legal academic, and is a full professor of law at the University of Waikato, specialising in the law on intellectual property and information technology, and alternative dispute resolution, including online dispute resolution. She is an accredited mediator, and works in practice and as a legal consultant. She is the Dean of the Waikato Law School.
Roy became interested in social justice and law during her childhood, saying "My father would often discuss the lives and times of leaders such as Gandhi, Mandela, Lincoln – and they often had studied law!".[1] Roy also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology Sydney, and a Bachelor of Law with Honours from the University of Sydney.[2]
Roy completed a PhD titled A postcolonial analysis of intellectual property law at the University of Sydney in 2006.[3] She practised as a barrister at the New South Wales bar in 2008/2009. Roy held academic positions at a number of Australian universities, including Western Sydney University, where she was Associate Dean of Research at the School of Law, and University of Queensland, the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University. Roy joined the faculty of the University of Waikato in 2020, being appointed as a full professor and Dean of the Law School. In addition to her academic roles, Roy works in legal practice and as a legal consultant. She was elected to the council of InternetNZ in 2022.[4]
Roy's research focuses on intellectual property and information technology, covering such areas as the law around domain names, Indigenous and traditional knowledge, and dispute resolution mechanisms. In 2009, Roy became an accredited mediator, having had her interest in alternative dispute resolution sparked due to the benefits that can be obtained to all parties (including courts) when disputes are resolved earlier. Her interests extend to online dispute resolution, particularly in relation to the UDRP and auDRP.[5] Roy's book on Australian domain name law, published in 2016, has been described as "the international authority in the area because it is the first authoritative study anywhere in the world to critically examine Australian domain name law."