Rate My Professor Morten Pedersen

Dr Morten Pedersen serves as Senior Lecturer in International and Political Studies within the School of Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy. His research centers on Burmese politics and development affairs, human rights, and tools of international statecraft. He is currently developing a multi-year comparative project examining international human rights work in Burma, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Pedersen's fields of research include Government and Politics of Asia and the Pacific, Human Rights, and International Relations. Prior to his academic role, he worked as a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Myanmar and as a policy advisor on Myanmar politics and development for the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Australian government, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, among others.

Pedersen has authored several influential books, including Promoting Human Rights in Burma: A Critique of Western Sanctions Policies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), A Good Office: Twenty Years of UN Mediation in Myanmar (with Anna Magnusson, International Peace Institute, 2012), and Principled Engagement: Negotiating Human Rights in Pariah States (with David Kinley, Ashgate, 2013). His key contributions encompass book chapters such as 'Democracy and Human Rights under Military Rule: Three Iterations of Myanmar’s National Security State' (2023) and 'The 2021 Military Coup: Causes and Consequences' (2023), as well as journal articles like 'The Rohingya crisis, Myanmar, and R2P "Black holes"' (Global Responsibility to Protect, 2021) and 'The ICC, the Rohingya and the limitations of retributive justice' (Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2019). In 2013, he won the Boyer Prize for the best original article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs for 'How to promote human rights in the world's most repressive states: Lessons from Myanmar'. Pedersen's scholarship has shaped discourse on Myanmar's political dynamics, international human rights strategies, and engagement with repressive states.