Professor Lee Godden is a Professor at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, whose research sits at the intersection of Environmental Law and Indigenous Peoples’ Law. She holds a PhD, MA, BLegS, and BA Hons. In late 2024, she returned to Melbourne Law School after serving as Dean of the Law Faculty at Victoria University of Wellington. From 2013 to 2015, she was an Australian Law Reform Commissioner, leading the review of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). She currently serves as Acting Director of the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub and Director of the Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law (CREEL). Her research interests centre on climate change and energy transition, biodiversity protection, disaster law and adaptation, and reframing property law to better give effect to habitat. Godden contributed to the Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlements Project at the University of Melbourne for nine years and was part of a large multidisciplinary team funded by the National Water Commission for a major water study. In her teaching for 2026, she delivers Indigenous Law in Aotearoa and Australia and Property in the Melbourne JD program, and Environmental Law in the Melbourne Law Masters.

Professor Godden’s contributions to the evolution of Australian environmental law and water law were recognized with the Eminent Environmental Lawyer Award from the Legal Practice Division of the Australian Law Council in 2023. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law (2016) and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (2017). A co-authored monograph on climate mitigation and sequestration received the American Society of International Law 2019 Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law. Her key publications include co-editing the Handbook of Energy Law in the Low-Carbon Transition (De Gruyter, 2023), Routledge Handbook on Property, Law and Society (Routledge, 2022), and authoring The Impact of Climate Change Mitigation on Indigenous and Forest Communities: International, National and Local Law Perspectives on REDD+ (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Other significant works are ‘Native Title: Steps Toward a Decolonised Law Curriculum’ (Routledge, 2024), ‘Fragmentation in Urban Water Governance: Navigating Legal and Normative Modalities’ (Routledge, 2022), ‘Situating Property within Habitat: Reintegrating People, Place, and Law’ (Journal of Law, Property, and Society, 2021), and ‘Racialized water governance: the ‘hydrological frontier’ in the Northern Territory, Australia’ (Australasian Journal of Water Resources, 2022). She has held roles on the Undergraduate Studies Committee and Equal Opportunity Committee, and is affiliated with the Environmental Law Division of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Professional Email: l.godden@unimelb.edu.au