Miriam Cullen

Miriam Cullen

Associate Professor

Member of:

    Miriam is from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research focus is human rights, social sustainability, and critical perspectives on international law. Miriam currently leads a project for the Danish Institute for Human Rights on the realisation of the right to highest attainable standard of mental and physical health in Greenland, where she and her family lived in 2023. She also leads a project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark which examines climate and disaster resilience in the context of law and colonialism, with particular focus on Greenland and the Cook Islands. Miriam is Principal Investigator on the project "'Climate Refugees' in the Nordic Region? Legal and Policy Responses to New Patterns of Human Mobility". She sits on the Advisory Committee to the Platform on Disaster Displacement and co-founded the Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility

    Teaching

    • Course director - Indigeneity, Law, and Nature (2023 - )
    • Course director - Climate Change and Human Rights (Ilisimatusarfik / University of Greenland, 2023)
    • Course director - Climate Change, Disaster, and Human Mobility (2020-)
    • Course director - Migration and Forced Displacement from Climate Change (2018 - )
    • Lecturer – International Migration Law
    • Lecturer – Public International Law
    • Lecturer – International Criminal Law  (2013-2015)

    Miriam also lectures in other Faculties at KU as part of the Masters of Disaster Management; the Masters of Advanced Migration Studies; and the Masters of Climate Change.

    Previous experience

    Prior to joining the Faculty at KU, Miriam represented the Australian Government on the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, having independently negotiated a range of human rights resolutions, including those on the rights of migrants, social development, and extreme poverty. Miriam has been a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and was a Visiting Professional in the Immediate Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in 2015. She has managed Parliamentary Committee Inquiries in the Legislative Council of the New South Wales Parliament, as well as Law Reform Inquiries for the Victorian Law Reform Commission. She has also held positions in the International Legal Division, and the International Security Division and the Afghanistan Desk of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

    Education

    Miriam holds a PhD from Copenhagen University, a Master of Laws (International Law) and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Australian National University, and a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Politics) (First Class Honours) from Monash University. She is admitted to practice as an Australian Legal Practitioner in the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory.

    ID: 49763128