Professor Afshin Akhtar-Khavari

Biography

Afshin Akhtar-Khavari is a Professor of International Law (Public and Private) at the School of Law. He earned his BSc (genetics) and LLB from the University of New South Wales, LLM from the University of Sydney and PhD from Griffith University.

Afshin's research moves the boundaries of environmental law's concerns and focus by critiquing and reimagining it for the benefit of non-human living beings and systems. His interdisciplinary approach to the law is influenced by reading science and technology, ethics and international politics to understand non-human relationality, creativity, and ways that they experience reality. He is particularly interested in ideas and theories about science that push traditions in that discipline and the influence that this then has on developments in law and governance. He is presently working on projects concerned with restoration, extinction, compassion and plants, examining how environmental law's reach can be further extended for the benefit of non-human beings. He has published widely into journals, edited collections and has written monographs, textbooks, and edited books and special issues of journals. He is currently writing a book for the Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies series on the topic of international law and restorative environmentalism.

Afshin has been a thought leader and innovator in curriculum design and teaching in the area of 'internationalising' legal education, and in 2004 developed and continued to run until 2017 the first Australian compulsory global and transnational law course for first year law students at the Griffith Law School. He is currently conducting research into the potential of informing legal education with approaches that are informed by compassion and also emotions like empathy.

Akhtar-Khavari has held a variety of university management roles including Director of Research for four years at the QUT Law School, and   (acting) Head of School, Deputy Dean (Academic), and Director of Internationalisation at the Griffith Law School. Akhtar-Khavari has been chair of the Research Committee of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law and is a member of numerous international committees and organisation.

Afshin has supervised to completion a significant number of PhD projects in international law (public and private), and also environmental law, from students of many different countries. He is passionate about developing new scholars through PhD research and is particularly interested in supporting students who have academic career ambitions. He has a number of past students who have published their studies as monographs and started their academics careers contributing to international law research.