Martin Hardie

Martin Hardie is a legal anthropologist, writer, and researcher based in the mountains of Aileu, Timor-Leste.

He began in music: managing bands (the Laughing Clowns, Warumpi Band), running an Aboriginal art centre in Katherine, and founding the Association of Northern and Central Australian Aboriginal Artists. He then studied law, earning honours at Northern Territory University, and practised as a barrister and solicitor in constitutional and administrative law. He was the driving force behind the Aboriginal copyright cases of the 1980s and 1990s, and worked on the legal team in *Ramos-Horta v Commonwealth* — the challenge to Australian legislation dividing Timor-Leste's oil and gas resources. He was also solicitor and counsel in Australia's euthanasia case.

His relationship with Timor-Leste began in 1992 as legal affairs officer to the Timorese resistance leadership. Over three decades he has served as advisor to Xanana Gusmão, José Ramos-Horta, Francisco Xavier do Amaral, and Avelino Coelho, working through the independence transition and beyond. From 2022 to 2026 he has served as Principal Research Officer to President José Ramos-Horta.

He holds a PhD in legal anthropology from Deakin University for his thesis on cycling, doping, and governance. He has taught law at Charles Darwin University, Deakin University, Florida State University, the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain, and at universities in Timor-Leste. He has been a cycling journalist and correspondent for *El País*, *Procycling*, and *Cyclingnews*, and once managed a professional cycling team.

His books include *Governing the Society of Competition: Cycling, Doping and the Law* (Hart Bloomsbury, 2020), *The Garden Without Gates* (Auskadi Samizdats, 2026), *Tesi Lian and the Law: Customary Law in Timor-Leste, A Graphical Investigation* (Auskadi Samizdats, 2026), and *I Wish I Was Twenty One Now: Beyond Doping in the Australian Peloton* (Auskadi Samizdats, 2010). He writes regularly at The Garden Without Gates on Substack.

He has lived in Australia, the United Kingdom, Timor-Leste, Panama, Mozambique, and the Basque Country. He currently lives in Aileu, Timor-Leste, where he grows coffee and vanilla, and spends his time with the ambition of becoming the archetype of life within communism: at the break of dawn a farmer, during the day a researcher and a cook, in the afternoons a student and philosopher, and at nights, simply pleasant company.