International recognition for UNSW academic

UNSW's Dr Jane Goodman-Delahunty has won the American Psychology-Law Society's 2005-2006 book award for an outstanding contribution to the field of law and psychology.

Dr Goodman-Delahunty and her American colleague William E Foote were recognised for their book, Evaluating Sexual Harassment: Psychological, social, and legal considerations in forensic evaluations. The book demonstrates a successful fusion of law, social, organisational and clinical psychology. It cites more than 500 scholarly sources, which were distilled and synthesised to provide an evidence-based model for practitioners conducting assessments and providing expert evidence in civil forensic settings.

"We are delighted to receive this recognition for our research on workplace sexual harassment and ways that this body of scholarship can contribute to enhance the legal process," says Dr Goodman-Delahunty, an associate professor in the UNSW School of Psychology.

"One of the challenges in writing the book was to provide material usable by plaintiff and defence experts on a phenomenon as socially and politically divisive as sexual harassment. Another was to delineate a stable model for evidence-based assessment in a relatively new field where legal standards for compensation are just as controversial and subject to reformulation."

Jane Goodman-Delahunty is a lawyer and an applied cognitive psychologist. She litigated civil rights and employment discrimination cases in the USA, and for ten years before coming to UNSW, she was an Administrative Judge for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Los Angeles. She held academic positions in the USA in Psychology and Law, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr Foote is a clinical forensic psychologist in private practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They collaborated on the book via email and completed it without any face-to-face meetings.

Dr Goodman-Delahunty has been a part-time Commissioner on the New South Wales Law Reform Commission since 2002. She has served as President of the American Psychology-Law Society and is currently a Vice-President of NSW Chapter of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law. She has just concluded a six-year term as Editor-in-Chief of the interdisciplinary journal, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

The award will be formally presented at the Third International Congress of Psychology and Law to be held in Adelaide, July 3-8, 2007.