Helen's research interests are: Australian and comparative constitutional law, gender and constitutionalism, and constitutional history and theory. She has researched and written on the making of the Australian Constitution, comparative constitutional design and gender, the use of history in constitutional interpretation, and the ‘dialogue’ model of judicial review. Her current major research, supported by a four-year ARC Discovery Grant, is on the history of constitutional citizenship and gender.
She is a former director of the ‘1901 Centre’ at the University of Technology, Sydney, and former director of the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at Sydney Law School. She is a former member of the Advisory Council of the National Archives of Australia. She held the Harvard Chair of Australian Studies as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, 2005-2006. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.