Anna Arstein-Kerslake

Associate Professor Anna Arstein-Kerslake is an internationally recognised legal academic in the fields of human rights, disability rights, and gender justice at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She holds a PhD in Law from the National University of Ireland, Galway, a JD from the City University of New York School of Law, and a BA in Sociology from San Diego State University. Before joining Melbourne Law School, she was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, National University of Ireland, Galway, researching the right to equal recognition before the law and collaborating with governments, international organisations, communities, and academics in Europe, the USA, Asia, and Australia. Currently, she is Director (Student Experience) across the JD, LLM, and PhD programmes, Co-ordinator of the Disability Research Initiative, Chief Investigator on the Australian Government-funded Unfitness to Plead Project—which applies a human rights lens to the indefinite detention of people with cognitive disability found unfit to plead—and a member of the Scope Australia Human Research Ethics Committee.

Arstein-Kerslake founded the Disability Human Rights Research Network in 2015, co-founded the Australian Disability Access to Justice Consortium, developed and leads the Disability Human Rights Clinic and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and Disability Benefits Clinic at Melbourne Law School, and served on the Establishment Committees for the Melbourne Disability Institute and the Centre for Disability Law and Policy at National University of Ireland, Galway. She was Academic Convenor of the University-wide Hallmark Disability Research Initiative from 2014 to 2017. Her key publications include Restoring Voice to People with Cognitive Disabilities: Realising the Right to Equal Recognition Before the Law (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Legal Capacity and Gender: Realising the Human Right to Legal Personhood and Agency of Women, Disabled Women, and Gender Minorities (Springer, 2020). She has also published extensively on legal capacity, supported decision-making, and personhood rights, contributing to global law reform and policy development in disability rights.

Professional Email: anna.arstein@unimelb.edu.au