Dale has been tutoring and lecturing in Contract Law and Civil Procedure at USC since 2017.
Dale holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and a Bachelor of Politics and Government, and is admitted to the legal profession in the Supreme Court of Queensland. Before entering academia, Dale worked with public and private organisations, assisting in the application and enforcement of policies, procedures and laws. He has held executive positions in academic organisations, including the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia and the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand.
Dale situates his research in the burgeoning discipline of Cultural Legal Studies, an area of critical theoretical exploration which uses cultural artifacts (novel,comic,films,art) to connect, (re)imagine and challenge understandings of law, jurisprudence and justice. He has presented at national and international conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections analysing popular culture texts like Pokemon, Superman, She-Hulk and Captain America: Civil War as avenues for exploring legal and jurisprudence concepts.
His dissertation "What is a Just Representation?": Cultural Legal Studies in the Age of Transmedia and Adaption reads select legal paradigms as they transform, translate and transcend the boundaries of form through adapted multi-texts. It uses adaption analysis as a way of re-articulating and re-reading legal terms, revealing new insights into legal concepts (civil war, anthropocentric rights, the state) and form itself (Film,comics, video games, novels). It reveals that nothing is ever just a representation, highlighting the possibility of popular culture texts to mediate legal and jurisprudential theories.
Alongside his colleagues Dr Ashley Pearson and Dr Timothy Peters, Dale is editing Playing the Law: A Jurisprudence of Video Games and Virtual Realities, which seeks to further interdisciplinary legal scholarship by promoting engagement with interactive games and virtual worlds.
Professional memberships
- Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia
- Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand
- American Culture Association / Popular Culture Association
- Graphic Justice Research Alliance
- Sunshine Coast Law Association
- Australian Lawyers Alliance
- Queensland Law Society
- Law Council of Australia
Awards
- Excellence in HDR (Higher Degree by Research) Leadership (2018) University of the Sunshine Coast
- 'Agamben and Law: Symposium and Theoretical Methods Materclass' (2018) Faculty of Arts, Business and Law HDR Excellence Grant
- Michael and Madonna Marsden Travel Grant (2019), Popular Culture Association
- 'Border Crossing: People and Place's Exchange Scholarship (2011) European Union/ Australian Government
Research areas
- Cultural Legal Studies
- Law and Popular Culture
- Civil Procedure
- Law and Technology
- Critical Gambling Studies
Teaching areas
- Contract Law
- Civil Procedure