Dr Rhonda Wheate
Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow
Law
Personal statement
Loving both reading and calculations, I studied Science (University Medal for chemistry, Hons Class I) and Law (Hons Class I) at university in Australia. This showed me how science and law can be combined to deliver better access to justice for defendants, victims, jurors and society. All of my subsequent work, as an academic and in practice, has been about pursuing better access to justice, beginning with the role of Associate to Chief Justice T. Higgins in the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory.
Then, under the supervision of Professor Eric Magnusson (Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales) and Professor James Robertson (Head, Australian Federal Police Forensic Services), my PhD research asked: How well do real juries in criminal trials comprehend scientific evidence? (The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is 'not very well'.) As well as asking real jurors, I also studied mock jurors, and working with the National Institute of Forensic Science, I interviewed forensic scientists from all seven states and territories of Australia for this research, and was awarded the Ria de Groot Prize for best female postgraduate for my PhD.
My later work in Australia and the UK has focused on how forensic science gets turned into expert evidence in the law courts. I study how expert evidence is used by scientists, judges and lawyers and what effect this has on access to justice for the prosecution, defence, jurors and society.
As well as working as an academic at universities in the UK and Australia, doing knowledge exchange activities, research and teaching, I have worked as a scientific and legal analyst at The Forensic Institute and I am the Impact Lead for the Scottish Institute for Policing Research.泭My current research with Police Scotland, Hemat Gryffe Women's Aid and others is examining how to improve access to justice for victims of domestic abuse and honour-based violence.泭
At the 勛圖tv, I have the privilege of working with the 勛圖tv Law Clinic and Law School to provide access to justice for some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and Clinical Legal Education to our students.
I deliver Continuing Professional Development courses and consultancy to legal practitioners, forensic scientists, expert witnesses and judges; as well as teaching criminal law, the law of evidence, and ethics and justice; and supervising Honours, Masters and PhD students in these areas.
Prize And Awards
- Recipient
- 2021
- Recipient
- 2007
Publications
- Melville Gillian, ,
- Edinburgh Law Review Vol 30, pp. 94-100 (2026)
- , ,
- IAF Earth Observation Symposium 76th International Astronautical Congress, pp. 298-302 (2026)
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- 76th International Astronautical Congress (2025)
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- Living Planet Symposium 2025 (2025)
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- Science and Justice Vol 64, pp. 710-727 (2024)
- , , , Nemeth Viktoria, Samuel Esayas
- 2024 IEEE International Humanitarian Technologies Conference (IHTC) IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference 2024 IEEE International Humanitarian Technologies Conference (2024)
Professional Activities
- Participant
- 11/4/2025
- Interviewee
- 14/2/2021
- Member
- 2021
- Member
- 2021
- Member
- 2021
- Speaker
- 2/9/2020
Projects
- Riccardi, Annalisa (Principal Investigator) Wheate, Rhonda (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2026
- Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator) McLaughlin, Elaine (Co-investigator) McGowan, Mhairi (Co-investigator) Faulds, Samantha (Co-investigator) Burton, Allan (Co-investigator)
- Funded (瞿17,918) by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute (瞿16,418), 勛圖tv Law School (瞿1,000) and Hemat Gryffe Women's Aid (瞿500). A series of multi-agency, multi-disciplinary events providing a forum for the analysis of current legal and policy frameworks in Scotland concerning Honour Based Abuse (HBA).
The project and events will consider the protection provided to victims of gender-based HBA through the law and policing. The project will illuminate and evaluate the effect of the law and policing on women who are impacted by the intersecting factors of gender, ethnicity, family networks, linguistic, financial, educational, immigration and other barriers in the face of HBA, creating recommendations for law reform, policy reform, and an animation to be played by Police Scotland in airport and immigration venues in relation to HBA. - 01-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2022
- Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator) McLaughlin, Elaine (Co-investigator) McGowan, Mhairi (Co-investigator) Faulds, Samantha (Co-investigator) Burton, Allan (Co-investigator)
- 瞿5000 HaSS Knowledge Exchange Small Grant to support the translation of high-quality research into knowledge exchange activities and outputs, and develop research networks and future research applications from existing knowledge exchange projects.
- 01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2022
- Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
- Report for the Scottish Sentencing Council, in collaboration with Glasgow University Law School (瞿8,175.44)
- 26-Jan-2021 - 30-Jan-2022
- Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
- HaSS COVID-19 Student Project Fund awarded to supervise a research assistant student (Calum Harris) for 10 hours research on Erving Goffman's "Frame Analysis" and Karl Popper's "Scientific Method", building a multi-disciplinary literature database to interrogate why sub-standard scientific evidence (forensic science) is permitted in criminal trials in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ.
- 19-Jan-2020 - 19-Jan-2021
- Wheate, Rhonda (Principal Investigator)
- I provided a seminar in Criminal Law and Jury Trials to 35 senior members of the Thai judiciary, who were visiting 勛圖tv for an academic programme on Scots Law.
- 14-Jan-2019 - 27-Jan-2019
Contact
Dr
Rhonda
Wheate
Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow
Law
Email: r.wheate@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 4347