Staff Profiles

Dr Anna Arstein-Kerslake is an international leader in the fields of human rights, disability rights, gender justice, and legal personhood. She has published widely in these areas, including her recent sole-authored books, Restoring Voice to People (Cambridge University Press 2017) and Legal Capacity and Gender (Springer 2020). She was the Programme Director of the LLM in International Human Rights Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights (ICHR) at University of Galway (2021-22) and the Programme Director for the BA Connect in Human Rights at ICHR (2022-23). She is also the Associate Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the School of Law and is the Athena SWAN Lead for self-evaluating gender equality at the School of Law. In addition, she is the Vice Dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Business, Public Policy, and Law. 

She has led several large scale research projects as well as law and policy reform initiatives. For example, she was a Chief Investigator on the Unfitness to Plead Project, funded by the Australian Government, which applied a human rights framework to investigate the indefinite detention of people with cognitive disability after being found 'unfit to plead'. She has also received several grants for the development of the international Disability Human Rights Research Network (DHRRN), which she founded in 2015 and spans Europe, India, USA, and Australia.

She has also been a leader in interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial research development. From 2014-2017, she was the Academic Convenor of the Hallmark Disability Research Initiative (DRI) across all faculties of the University of Melbourne. Under her leadership, the Initiative built three international  interdisciplinary research networks, held a series of public and internal events, provided seed funding to over 30 new interdisciplinary research projects, and brought in over $2.5 million in external funding. 

Dr Arstein-Kerslake is also committed to bringing research into the classroom and engaging students with community, industry, and government sectors. She developed and led, the Disability Human Rights Clinic (DHRC) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and Disability Benefits Clinic at Melbourne Law School. She has also developed the first modules at the School of Law in NUI Galway focused on Critical Social Theory (including Critical Race Theory). There is a module at the undergraduate level (Equality and Law) and post-graduate level (Critical Race Theory and Human Rights). Both modules innovatively engage students directly in understanding and developing solutions to social problems in Ireland and internationally. 

She has also held various fellowships and visiting scholar posts - including the 
Douglas McK. Brown Chair in Law at Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, and a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at NUIG. Dr Arstein-Kerslake has also participated widely in consultation with governments and other bodies, including: World Health Organisation (WHO), United Kingdom Ministry of Justice, Irish Ministry of Justice, Amnesty Ireland, Interights, and Mental Disability Advocacy Center, among others. Notably, she provided support to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on their General Comment on the right to equal recognition before the law.

She holds a PhD in Law from NUIG, a JD from the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, and a BA in Sociology from San Diego State University (SDSU).