Anna is an Associate Professor in Public Policy and Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney. From 2023-2024, she was Chair of Discipline, where she managed 47 full-time and part-time staff.

As well as being an academic, she is an admitted solicitor and has undertaken legal work at Clayton Utz Law Firm and Violet Co & Legal, the latter as an employment solicitor. A frequent public speaker, she engages in considerable practical and academic work in public and legal policy.

She sits as VP (Independent) on the Executive Committee of The Australian Institute of Employment Rights, the Immigration Minister of Australia’s Migration Advisory Council on Skilled Migration Expert Sub-Committee and was from 2023-4 on the Advisory Panel of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner. She is on the academic advisory panel to the British Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement on labour abuse. She is also an academic consultant to Outside Opinion. She reviews for the leading journals, publishers and funding agencies globally in political science, public policy and law (and sometimes, upon request, in economics, demography and industrial relations, as it relates to migration).

Her tertiary education encompasses political science, law and research methods at the University of Sydney and the London School of Economics and Political Science and she holds six qualifications in these fields. She is a former Commonwealth Scholar, University Medalist, Zeit Ebelin Bucerius Scholar in Migration Studies, Laffan, DECRA and SOAR Fellow. Her research, teaching and policy practice focuses on unsurfacing, documenting and ultimately solving subterranean political and social phenomenon. She is a frequent media commentator advisor in Australia and globally.

Her leadership style is humanistic and she has been nominated for, and won, many awards, most recently in 2024, the Faculty Teaching Leadership Award for excellence in mentoring and leading others in their teaching. She was one of 8 Australians who completed the 9-month Future Shapers DLI training in 2025 that focuses on vertical leadership models.

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Current research

Boucher is currently working on, or near publication of, diverse research on the following topics:

  • The intersection between immigration regimes, industrial relations and migrant worker exploitation (single-authored).

  • Migrant intervention in court cases (with Eda Gunaydin, Wollongong).

  • Trauma-informed analysis of migration and sexual violence (single-authored).

  • Welfare regime variation and migration cross-nationally (with Juliette Pietsch, Griffith University, Terry Carney, Ghena Krayem and others, USyd)

  • The intersection of education and immigration policy (with Gaby Ramia, USyd)

  • An appraisal of skilled immigration shifts globally (for Jeanette Money, UC Davis for an edited volume).

  • Race and migration (global consortium led by Professor Terri Givens, UBC).

  • Two major reviews for Perspectives on Politics on leading texts in immigration.

  • She has recently undertaken commissioned research for Settlement Services International and the Sydney Policy Lab.

Contact.