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 is interested in law and nonhuman societies. He writes about environmental issues and challenges within the law drawing on theory, science and ecology. 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 is currently a CI on two ARC Discovery Projects. The first examines the potential of traceability technologies to influence governance and policing of plastics. The second studies the potential of property covenants to support restoration activities that will allow private landholders to respond to climate change.

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 organisations. He is an Associate Editor of Plant Perspective and is on the editorial board of the Griffith Law Review.

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. Afshin is also currently a principal supervisor of six PhD students.