Kathleen Birrell

Kathleen Birrell is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Graduate Research at La Trobe Law School, where her research explores critical legal methodologies at the intersection of law, ecology, humanities, and decolonial theory. She teaches courses in legal theory, property law, environmental law, and climate law.

Her research examines the changing relationship between law and ecology through frameworks of new materialism and geophilosophy in the Anthropocene context. Current projects investigate implications for legal scholarship and activism.

Publications demonstrate strong focus on climate imaginaries in international law, sovereignty in the Anthropocene, and indigenous legal frameworks, with recent work appearing in Routledge Handbooks and Griffith Law Review.

• La Trobe Law School Early Career Research Excellence Award (2022)

As Director of Graduate Research, she supervises doctoral candidates on topics including feminist legal history, settler colonial affect, and indigenous land rights. Leads the Anthropocene Reading Group and serves as Editor for the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment.