Professor Hilary Charlesworth

Overview

Hilary Charlesworth is Harrison Moore Professor of Law and a Melbourne Laureate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She is also a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University. Her research includes the structure of the international legal system, peacebuilding, human rights law and international humanitarian law, international legal theory, particularly feminist approaches to international law, and the art of international law. Hilary received the American Society of International Law’s award for creative legal scholarship for her book, co-authored with Christine Chinkin, The Boundaries of International Law. She was also awarded, with Christine Chinkin, the American Society of International Law’s Goler T. Butcher award for ‘outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights law’. In 2021, the International Studies Association conferred a Distinguished Scholar award on Hilary. She has held both an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship (2005-2010) and an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2010-2015).

Hilary has been a visiting professor at various institutions including Harvard Law School, New York University Global Law School, UCLA, Paris I and the London School of Economics. She has been a member of the Executive Council of the Asian Society of International Law and the American Society of International Law as well as President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law.  In 2016 Hilary was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. She delivered the General Course in Public International Law at the Hague Academy in 2019. She is a member of the Institut de Droit International and served as Judge ad hoc in the International Court of Justice in the Whaling in the Antarctic case (Australia v Japan) (2011-2014) and is currently Judge ad hoc in the Arbitral Award of 3 October 1899 case (Guyana v Venezuela).