Dr Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia, an award-winning teacher of International Humanitarian Law, Public International Law and Legal Research. Her research examines the connection between human rights and genocide; and sexual and gender-based crimes against women in atrocities, conducting fieldwork and research across six continents. Her work on forced marriage has been cited by the International Criminal Court, she has appeared before the ICC as an amicus curia and has been an expert consultant for several UN bodies.
Melanie is President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) and an Australian Red Cross WA International Humanitarian Law Committee member. She was 2022 Research Fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum and is a 2023 Visiting Fellow at the University of Loughborough, UK.
Melanie is an admitted legal practitioner who has previously worked at several Australian universities; the National Human Rights Institution of Samoa; and the Legal Advisory Section of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. She is the author of Criminalising Peacekeepers: Modernising National Approaches to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (Palgrave), and From Discrimination to Death: Genocide Process through a Human Rights Lens (Routledge). She tweets @DrMelOB.