Dr May Cheong
Professor
- PhD (Sydney): Unfair Contracts in Malaysia
- LLM (NUS)
- LLB (Hons) (Malaya)
- Diploma in Shariah Law and Practice (IIUM)
- Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (ACU)
- Fellowship (FHEA)
Law & Justice
School of Private & Commercial Law
May is an Associate Professor in the School of Private and Commercial Law, Faculty of Law and Justice.Her main research areas are contract law, commercial law, consumer and competition law, unfair contracts, remedies, restitution/unjust enrichment. May is a comparative law scholar focussing on Asian law. May's recent research interest is the intersection of law and technology centring on contract and consumer protection. She teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in a wide range of subjects including contracts and consumer protection. May supervises LLM and PhD candidates and is currently co-supervising PhD candidatures in the areas of smart contracts and modern slavery.
May is also an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, Multimedia University and was formerly Deputy Head of School, Thomas More Law School, Australian Catholic University. May was also formerly a Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, and had previously practiced as a commercial litigation lawyer at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia after being admitted as an Advocate & Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya.
May is author of Australian Contract Law: Principles and Cases (Lawbook Co, 2nd ed, 2025 forthcoming) and Contract Law in Malaysia (Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2010). She is also co-author with Yin Harn Lee, of Civil Remedies (Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2nd ed, 2016) and with Rafiah Salim, of Evidence Law in Malaysia and Singapore: Cases and Commentary (Lexis Nexis Malaysia, 2013). May has also contributed chapters in four of the six series of Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia(Oxford University Press), and chapters on competition law in The Regionalisation of Competition Law and Policy within the ASEAN Economic Community(Cambridge University Press, 2018) and in Research Handbook on Asian Competition Law (Edward Elgar). She has published peer-reviewed articles in contracts, competition and consumer protection in Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal,Journal of Contract Law and Competition and Consumer Law Journal,on gender issues in the Journal of Law and Society and Feminist Legal Studies,and in The Indigenous Law Journal.
E-mail
Location
Room 364
Law & Justice Building (F8)
UNSW Sydney
Kensington
NSW 2052
Australia
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- The Australian Catholic University Teaching Development Grant (2021) on Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge and Perspectives in the Law Curriculum (with Dr Joe Campana)
- 2021: recipient of the Australian Catholic University Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning
- 2021: recipient of the Faculty of Law and Business, Australian Catholic University Innovation Excellence Award
My research areas are contract law, commercial law, consumer law, unfair contracts, remedies and comparative Asian law (including legal transplantation) and has extended to smart contracts and gender issues.My other research interest is competition law particularly on the legal and regulatory frameworks of competition law regimes in ASEAN member states.
My current research focuses on legal transplantation of colonial legislation (of English law) and its continuing impact to the contract laws in India and Malaysia (the Indian Contract Act 1872 and the Malaysian Contracts Act 1950). Another subject of my research is gender equality which I have jointly published from perspectives of women directors in Malaysia, and marriage transmitted debts impacting women in China.
My Research Supervision
Smart Contracts, PhD candidate