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Emeritus Professor, The University of Melbourne

Emeritus Professor Gillian Triggs is the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, taking up her appointment by the Commonwealth Attorney-General in 2012. She was Dean of the Faculty of Law and Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney from 2007-12 and Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 2005-7. She is a former Barrister with Seven Wentworth Chambers and a Governor of the College of Law.

Professor Triggs graduated in Law from the University of Melbourne in 1968 and gained a PhD in 1982. She has combined an academic career with international commercial legal practice and worked with governments and international organizations on human rights law. She hopes to focus her Presidency on the implementation in Australian law of the human rights treaties to which Australia is a party, and to work with nations in the Asia Pacific region on practical approaches to human rights.

Professor Triggs' long-standing commitment to legal education will build upon the Commission's efforts to inform Australians, especially children, about their fundamental human rights.

She has been a consultant on International Law to Mallesons Stephen Jaques, a Board Member of the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH), the Australian representative on the Council of Jurists for the Asia Pacific Forum for National Human Rights Institutions, Chair of the Board of the Australian International Health Institute, a member of the Attorney General's International Legal Service Advisory Council and Chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans.

Professor Triggs is married to Alan Brown AM, a former Australian diplomat, and has two children. She lives in Sydney.

Experience

  • –present
    Emeritus Professor, University of Sydney