BEN WHITE: My name is Ben White. I'm an associate professor in the Faculty of Law and I'm part of the health law research program.
Increasingly research is being funded through the federally government through its grant research programs and QUT has got support to enable academics to be able to out and get those federally funded grants which enables us to do that high quality research.

The advantage of a research degree is it provides an opportunity to really think about matters in depth. So with coursework you get an opportunity to try different things, at a relatively general level but research provides the opportunity to be able to drill down into a great deal of depth, and also on a topic you're really interested in.

When you undertake a PhD at QUT you'll have at least two supervisors. You'll have a principle supervisor and an associate supervisor, and sometimes depending on the nature of the topics you may have other supervisors as well to make sure you are getting a full level of input and expertise to complete that research degree.

You'll meet with your supervisor regularly. There's a chance to pick his or her brains: "Here's what I'm thinking, here's my ideas", and generally just taking that project with support and assistance from the supervisors.

ROWENA MAGUIRE: My name's Rowena Maguire. I'm a lecturer in the QUT Law School.

To me research is very important in society. Research is the place where new ideas are created and new knowledge is transferred and to me those are really important functions in society.

My reason for choosing QUT to undertake my initial research is that I did my undergraduate at QUT and I guess I really enjoyed the culture of the Law School here. I always found the law school here quite warm and friendly and a nice place to be.

In addition to that, my supervisor for environmental law is very highly regarded and he was probably one of the major reasons why I chose QUT as well.

Research subjects, or research courses are usually completed at the postgraduate level and what research subject offer students is the offer students structure in terms of how to carry out research projects. So generally research subjects only have one piece of assessment, and that assessment is a major written piece of assessment. Usually a 10,000 word article or something like that.

BILL DUNCAN: I'm Bill Duncan, the Assistant Dean for the Faculty of Law.

Well law research, as I said, could mean a number of things. What it really means is we are either given a problem or we develop a problem ourselves, we look at the current literature on the subject, we analyse the literature and we answer a number of questions.
Now these research questions probably are questions, which are formulated by people outside who want answers to questions and particularly government, and in some cases industry.

So we analyse the law and legal principles. We analyse statutes, cases and policy instruments and we come up with a solution or suggestive solutions to current problems.

ROSALIND MASON: My name is Professor Rosalind Mason and I'm the head of School of Law at QUT.

Someone who is for example a scholarly practitioner, they may be a legal practitioner but always since their undergraduate years have really wanted to undertake a research project but maybe don't want to undertake a doctorate I law.

For these people we offer a Masters of Law by research. So that is a research project where they can take less time to be able to engage in an area and produce a piece of research work which they may then subsequently publish and have the satisfaction of having undertaken research in a particular area of some depth.

If they do undertake something like this an advantage may be a career where they are known as a specialist in a particular area of law. Within our master of laws we draw not only upon the expertise of our staff who are within the faculty, but also we have a highly skilled sessional staff who are often senior levels of practice from downtown who will come and deliver lectures. And who may come from interstate and overseas to deliver subjects in their particular area of expertise and their speciality.