Associate Professor Maria O’Sullivan

Maria O’Sullivan is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Monash University and a Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Her teaching and research interests are administrative law, public law and international refugee law. Maria has completed a PhD thesis on cessation of refugee status under Article 1C(5) of the 1951 Refugee Convention and is the author of a number of international and national publications on the subjects of refugee law. She was granted the Faculty of Law Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher, in recognition of outstanding academic achievement in 2016, and was a Nominee for the Monash University Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher.

Her latest publication is an edited volume on access to refugee protection and procedures: States, the Law and Access to Refugee Protection – Fortresses and Fairness (Hart, 2017), co-authored with Dallal Stevens, University of Warwick. This brings together contributions from international leading scholars and examines two of the most pertinent current challenges faced by asylum seekers in gaining access to international refugee protection: the obstacles to physical access to territory and barriers to accessing a quality asylum procedure. It includes papers on border issues in Turkey; the interdiction and screening of asylum seekers at sea, obstacles to entry for Central America refugees in the United States, the asylum system in South Africa and access to justice for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She is currently writing a monograph on the durability of refugee protection, to be published by Routledge in late 2018. Maria is a regular media commentator on refugee law and policy and has been published by The Conversation, Refugees Deeply and Asylum Insight.