Professor Nola Ries

Nola is an experienced legal and social science researcher and a member of the Law, Health & Justice Research Centre at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney. She is a prolific writer for legal and health audiences, with over 50 scholarly journal articles and 45 book chapters and commissioned reports.

Nola recently completed a NSW Government-funded project on elder abuse and developed a toolkit of resources to assist lawyers in identifying and responding when older clients are at risk for or experiencing abuse. She is a chief investigator on a nationally funded research project to design and evaluate strategies to support older people in advance legal planning for health and financial matters. In 2019, Nola holds a research fellowship with Health Justice Australia, a national centre for health-justice partnerships that integrate lawyers into healthcare settings to assist vulnerable clients.

Nola collaborates with the Australian Community of Practice on Research in Dementia in projects on assessing capacity and supporting decision-making. In 2016 Nola received competitive funding through the Australia-Japan Emerging Research Leaders Exchange Program for research visits to four pre-eminent Japanese research institutions to study the socio-legal aspects of assistive technologies for dementia care.

In 2017/18, Nola served on the NSW Divisional Committee of the Australian Association of Gerontology, is a member of that Association’s Elder Abuse Special Interest Group, and is a founding member of a working group on dementia and elder abuse in the Newcastle-Hunter region of NSW.