Overview
Jonathan Liberman is an Associate Professor in Law and Global Health with a joint appointment in the Melbourne Law School and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Jonathan has over twenty years' experience in legal and policy research, teaching, advice, training and technical support relating to health at both domestic and global levels.
Jonathan was the Founding Director of the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer, serving as Director from February 2012 to March 2020. Under Jonathan’s leadership, the McCabe Centre became a WHO Collaborating Centre for Law and Non-Communicable Diseases; a WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Knowledge Hub; and established an international legal training program that builds capacity and expertise among government officials in the use of law for the prevention and control of cancer and other NCDs, particularly in the context of developing policy coherence between health, trade, investment, human rights and sustainable development.
Since early 2020, Jonathan’s work has expanded to cover the global governance of infectious diseases, including the current negotiations through the World Health Organization to develop a new treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and to amend the International Health Regulations (2005). In 2020-1, Jonathan led a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific supporting countries in the Western Pacific Region in their use of law in responding to COVID-19.
Jonathan’s work examines the ways in which international legal instruments and processes designed to protect and promote global health interact with other international legal frameworks and regimes across such areas as international trade, intellectual property, international investment, human rights, and climate change and environment.
Jonathan has published extensively on the relationships between law and health, and co-edited two books (with Professors Tania Voon and Andrew Mitchell), Public Health and Plain Packaging of Cigarettes: Legal Issues, and Regulating Tobacco, Alcohol and Unhealthy Foods: The Legal Issues. Jonathan was a member of the Australian Government’s Expert Advisory Group on Plain Packaging and the International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Group on Social Inequalities and Cancer. He is a member of the University of Melbourne’s STEMM Human Ethics Committee.