Michelle Lim

Dr Michelle Lim is an Associate Professor in Law, Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University. Her interdisciplinary scholarship occurs at the intersection between biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Michelle completed a double degree in Science (Ecosystem Management) and Law and a PhD on legal and institutional arrangements for transboundary biodiversity conservation at the University of New England. Michelle's post-doctoral research, based at the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee, Scotland, examined governance approaches for addressing ecosystem services and human well-being in the Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna Delta.

Michelle’s work focuses on futures-oriented biodiversity law research aimed at advancing equity and sustainability under conditions of unprecedented environmental change. She is increasingly interested in approaches which allows affective engagement with scholarship and explores ways which challenge the form of scholarship including through creative and imaginative means of expression (e.g. speculative fiction, poetry).

Michelle was a fellow on the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and an author of the IPBES/IPCC joint workshop report. She was awarded the 2021 Law Society of Australia New Zealand scholarly article publication prize for the paper: "Extinction: hidden in plain sight–Can stories of 'the last' unearth environmental law's unspeakable truth?" published in the Griffith Law Review.

Michelle is Deputy Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law's Biodiversity Law Specialist Group.