Keynote Speakers

Professor Anne Poelina

Professor Anne Poelina is a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, film maker and respected academic researcher, with a second Doctor of Philosophy (First Law) titled, ‘Martuwarra First Law Multi-Species Justice Declaration of Interdependence: Wellbeing of Land, Living Waters, and Indigenous Australian People’ (Nulungu Institute of Research, University of Notre Dame, Broome, Western Australia). Anne is the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) inaugural First Nations appointment to its independent Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences (2022), and member of Institute for Water Futures, Australian National University, Canberra. Anne was awarded the Kailisa Budevi Earth and Environment Award, International Women’s Day (2022) recognition of her global standing and is an Ambassador for the Western Australian State Natural Rangelands Management (NRM) (2022).

See full biography here.

Gerrard Albert

Gerrard Albert the Chair of Te Kōpuka nā Te Awa Tupua, the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River) Strategy Group comprised of hapū and iwi leadership, local government mayors and chairs and sectorial and central government members. Up to 2021, he was the inaugural Chair of Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui, the post settlement body for Whanganui Iwi in respect of legal recognition of Te Awa o Whanganui as a living and indivisible, metaphysical and physical whole, Te Awa Tupua. Gerrard played a key role in the Te Awa Tupua negotiations from 2009, which culminated in a Deed of Settlement in 2014 and legislation in 2107. Te Awa Tupua flips the planning and regulatory paradigm to one which is led by the dictates and values of hapū and iwi, shared as a common and inclusive value set by all communities of the Whanganui catchment. Gerrard’s focus is otherwise dedicated to hapū development, primarily for his Ngā Paerangi and wider karangatanga (kinship groupings) of the lower reaches of the Whanganui River.

Professor Keakaokawai Varner Hemi

Professor Keakaokawai Varner Hemi (Kanaka Maoli, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Cherokee) is the inaugural Assistant Vice-Chancellor Pacific at the University of Waikato and former Associate Dean at Te Piringa Faculty of Law at the University of Waikato. She researches Pacific people and the law, Indigenous rights, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, human rights, legal theory, and comparative law, exploring issues like climate change, health and education that present wicked challenges to notions of equality and non-discrimination. She is a chapter author on the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade-funded Pacific Ocean Climate Crisis Assessment project covering 16 countries in the Pacific region, researching in the areas of social-ecological resilience and human rights and investigator on the NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment-funded Tauhokohoko: Indigenising Trade Policy and Enabling Mana Motuhake through Indigenous Trade research programme. Keaka is especially passionate about building leadership, pathways and success for Pacific and indigenous learners in tertiary education through indigenous cultural legacies of success and evidence-based approaches. She served as the chair of Komiti Pasifika at Universities New Zealand, from 2021-2023 and on the Ministry of Education's NCEA Pacific Peoples Review Panel from 2020-2023.

Associate Professor Sereana Naepi

Associate Professor Sereana Naepi is a researcher and educator committed to fostering equitable and inclusive higher education and research systems. As a Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Auckland’s Department of Social Sciences, Sereana’s work critically examines the intersections of equity, decolonisation, and systemic change in academia. Drawing on Pacific and Indigenous methodologies, she aims to challenge traditional power dynamics and advance transformative approaches to equity within higher education. Her research has been published in leading international journals and is recognised for offering critical insights into equity-focused policies and practices. Sereana values interdisciplinary and community-driven research and work to ensure her scholarship creates real-world impacts, and a key focus of her work is the use of Pacific research methods and methodologies. Grounded in the cultural values and knowledge systems of Pacific communities, these approaches emphasize relationality, reciprocity, and respect.  

Associate Professor Julia Dehm

Associate Professor Julia Dehm is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Associate Professor in the School of Law, La Trobe University Australia. Her research addresses urgent issues of international and domestic climate change and environmental law, natural resource governance and questions of human rights, economic inequality and social justice. Her books include Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (edited with Usha Natarajan), Power, Participation and Private Regulatory Initiatives: Human Rights under Supply Chain Capitalism (edited with Daniel Brinks, Karen Engle and Kate Taylor) and Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate Change and the Australian Legal System (edited with Nicole Graham and Zoe Nay). She was previously a consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing assistance and a 2023 Member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. Her current project "Resource Struggles and International Law: Navigating Global Transformations" examines how international law both shapes, and is shaped by, struggles over natural resources in periods of global transformation. She is also leading a project to mainstream climate change in legal education (https://climateconsciouslawyers.com/).

Associate Professor Cristy Clark

Dr Cristy Clark is an Associate Professor at the University of Canberra Law School. Her research focuses on the intersection of human rights and the environment, including issues of legal geography, Indigenous rights, and the commons. She has been published in leading academic journals, books, and popular media. Her co-authored book, ‘The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice’, is published by Edinburgh University Press. Cristy is an Affiliate member of the Centre for Environmental Governance, Co-convenor of the Climate Equality Working Group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, a member of the editorial board of Legalities, and a member of the Australian Discrimination Law Experts Group and the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Network of Australia and NZ. Cristy draws on her past professional experience as an environment and planning law solicitor, and human rights expert with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the ACT government. Cristy is currently working on two climate justice projects - one funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) on Intersectionality and Gender Diverse Climate Change Action in the Pacific, and one focused on adapting equality and anti-discrimination law to better respond to climate change.

Dr Erin O’Donnell

Dr Erin O’Donnell is a senior lecturer and ARC research fellow at Melbourne Law School. She is a water law and policy expert, and she is recognized internationally for her research into the legal rights for rivers and Indigenous rights to water. Since 2018, Erin has been a member of the Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River in Melbourne. She has also worked for the World Bank, examining water markets and their role in water security and sustainable development. In 2023, Erin commenced an Australian Research Council-funded fellowship to explore the opportunity of treaty to address aqua nullius, increase Traditional Owner power and resources in water, and create more sustainable and legitimate settler state water laws. Erin is working in partnership with Indigenous Peoples in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA.