Margaret Young

Professor Margaret A. Young FAAL is a Professor at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), and Director of Studies of the International Law Association (Australian branch). Specializing in public international law, the law of the sea, international trade law, climate change, and environmental law, her research examines regime interactions, the blue economy, and the potential and limits of international adjudication. She holds a BA/LLB (Hons) from the University of Melbourne, an LLM (first class) and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Young began her academic career as Research Fellow in Public International Law at Pembroke College and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. Previously, she served as associate to the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia and practised as a solicitor at a major Australian national law firm.

Young has held visiting appointments including Distinguished International Visiting Professor at the University of St Gallen (2022), Visiting Professor at Aix-Marseille University (2022) and State University of Saint Petersburg (2017), Director of Studies at the Hague Academy of International Law (2016), and Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2019-2020). She co-led an ARC project on international adjudication with Professor Hilary Charlesworth and serves as academic consultant to the World Bank’s Blue Economy Program. Her key publications include Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Regime Interaction in International Law: Facing Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and The Impact of Climate Change Mitigation on Indigenous and Forest Communities (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Awards include election as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law (FAAL, 2021), American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit (2019), IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Junior Scholar Prize, and University of Melbourne Woodward Medal. She is Assistant Editor of the British Year Book of International Law and co-chairs the Oceans and International Environmental Law Interest Group of ANZSIL.

Professional Email: m.young@unimelb.edu.au