Dr Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the UWA Law School, University of Western Australia, and she is the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). Dr O’Brien was a 2023-24 Visiting Professor at the UMN Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The International Criminal Court has cited Dr. O'Brien's work on forced marriage, and she has been an amica curia before the ICC. She has been an expert consultant for multiple UN bodies and is widely consulted by global media for her expertise on international criminal law. She has conducted fieldwork and research across six continents.
Dr. O'Brien is a member of the WA International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Australian Red Cross. She was a 2022 Research Fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum and; a 2023 Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Loughborough, UK.
Dr. O'Brien is the author of Criminalising Peacekeepers: Modernising National Approaches to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (Palgrave, 2017) and From Discrimination to Death: Genocide Process through a Human Rights Lens (Routledge, 2022).
- Visiting Scholar
- Human Rights Center