Sundhya Pahuja

Sundhya Pahuja is Melbourne Laureate Professor and ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, where she serves as Director of the Laureate Research Program in Global Corporations and International Law and Director of Studies for the master’s programs in International Law and Law and Development. From 2016 to 2023, she was Director of Melbourne Law School's Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH). A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, she is a global faculty member of the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy and has served as Director of Studies in Public International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law. Her research centers on the history, theory, and practice of international law, with a particular focus on the relationship between global North and South countries. She teaches and supervises in areas including international law, legal theory, political economy, international law and development, human rights, and theories of globalization.

Prior to academia, Sundhya Pahuja practiced as a commercial lawyer and worked as a research associate in international law and human rights at the European University Institute in Florence. She has held distinguished visiting positions such as the Genest Chair at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto (2018), visiting chairs at the National University of Singapore (2019) and the Graduate Institute in Geneva (2022), and a Research Chair in Law at SOAS University of London (2012-2015). Her accolades include the University of Melbourne’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Researcher Supervision (2020), Leverhulme Visiting Chair to Cambridge (2022), Max Planck-Cambridge Prize for International Law (2021), Fulbright Senior Fellow Award to Harvard (2016), major book prize from the American Society of International Law for Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (2012), and the Woodward Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2014). Key publications encompass Decolonising International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-authorship of International Law and the Cold War with Gerry Simpson and Matthew Craven, and editorship of The Oxford Handbook of International Law and Development with Ruth Buchanan, Luis Eslava, and others. She has delivered prestigious lectures such as the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures at Cambridge (2018) and the Newman Lecture at Yale (2019), chaired the Committee of Management at the Darebin Community Legal Centre, and served as senior advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

Professional Email: s.pahuja@unimelb.edu.au