Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is a Professor at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, and Director of the Melbourne Centre for Law and the Environment. She holds a Doctor of the Science of Law from Stanford University, where her dissertation empirically assessed regulatory arrangements for protecting surface water and ecosystems from groundwater pumping impacts, a Master of Laws from Stanford University, a Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours), both from the University of Melbourne in 2005, and a Diploma in Modern Languages (German) from the University of Melbourne in 2002. Prior to her academic career, she practiced as a lawyer at the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, and in private practice at Blake Dawson (now Ashurst). From 2010 to 2014, she led the Comparative Groundwater Law and Policy Program, a collaborative effort between Stanford University's Water in the West and the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre, involving empirical research and stakeholder workshops to improve groundwater sustainability in the western United States and Australia.

Rebecca Nelson's research focuses on environmental and natural resources law and policy, employing empirical, interdisciplinary, and comparative methods to tackle issues like cumulative environmental effects, described as environmental 'death by a thousand cuts', and groundwater sustainability. Funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from 2018 to 2021, she undertook the first large-scale global comparative analysis of laws regulating cumulative environmental effects, resulting in her open-access book Regulating A Thousand Cuts: Global Law and Policy Solutions to Cumulative Environmental Problems (Cambridge University Press, 2025). She co-authored Australia's leading water law textbook, Water Resources Law (2nd edition, LexisNexis Australia, 2017), and has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in outlets such as Nature Communications (2023, on stakeholder integration in groundwater policy), Ecology and Society (2022, on water rights for groundwater environments), and Melbourne University Law Review. Her accolades include the Law Council of Australia's Mahla Pearlman Young Environmental Lawyer of the Year (2014), General Sir John Monash Scholarship (2009), and Distinguished Associate of the International Association of Hydrogeologists (2025). Nelson contributes editorially to the Australasian Journal of Water Resources, serves as a Non-Resident Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, was Director of the Board of Bush Heritage Australia from 2014 to 2024, and engages policymakers, NGOs, communities, and governments through workshops, policy briefs, and interactive platforms.

Professional Email: rebecca.nelson@unimelb.edu.au