Profile of Invited Expert “Killean”

Profile

Full Name

Dr. Rachel Killean

Position

Senior Lecturer

Organization

University of Sydney Law School

URL

https://profiles.sydney.edu.au/rachel.killean

Biography

Dr Killean's multidisciplinary research centres responses to violence. She has a particular focus on transitional justice, victims' rights, and legal innovations that seek to prevent or repair environmental harms. Dr Killean is the Co-Convener of the ANZSOC Green Criminology thematic group and the Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law. She sits on the editorial board for the Journal of Genocide Research, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, and the Sydney Law Review. She also directs the Sydney Law School's social justice podcast, 'Just Cause’. Dr Killean has a longstanding research interest in Cambodia, including responses to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime and contemporary human rights challenges. Her collaborators have included the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh, the Bophana Audio Visual Centre, and the Documentation Centre of Cambodia. Her research has been funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the UK Global Challenges Research Fund, and the British Academy, amongst others.

Selected Citations to Published Materials

Rachel Killean, From Ecocide to Eco-Sensitivity: ‘Greening’ Reparations at the International Criminal Court, 25 Int’l J. of Hum. Rts. 323 (2021), paywall, doi.
Rachel Killean & Damien Short, A Critical Defence of the Crime of Ecocide, Envtl. Pol. (Apr. 24, 2025), available online, doi.
Rachel Killean & Elizabeth Newton, From Ecocide to Ecocentrism: Conceptualising Environmental Victimhood at the International Criminal Court, 31 IRV 238 (May 2025), available online, doi.
Rachel Killean, Ecocide’s Evolving Relationship With War, EAS (2025), available online, doi.
Rachel Killean & Elizabeth Newton, Transitional Justice and Other-Than-Human Harm: Lessons From Colombia, 30 Int’l J. of Hum. Rts. 145 (2025), available online, doi.

History

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park2026: Criminalizing Ecocide: Will Corporations Change? Introduction As climate change accelerates and ecosystems face unprecedented destruction, existing legal frameworks have proven inadequate to prevent or meaningfully deter large-scale environmental harm. Corporations, especially transnational corporations operating across jurisdictions, play a central role in driving deforestation, pollution, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas emissions, often... (more)
Wangu Gatonye: I. Introduction “Ecocide” was coined in the 1970s through a proposal by Professor Arthur W. Galston, but has only recently gained popularity in legal circles.1 The proposed definition is: “[U]nlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”2 The work that the diverse Independent... (more)
Talia Boyadjian: Why the IEPs Draft Definition of Ecocide Cannot Work as a Core Crime The concept of ecocide has circulated long before current efforts to amend the Rome Statute, with domestic and international circles debating it as a proposed legal tool to address human-caused extreme environmental destruction.1 Early formulations data back to the Vietnam War in response to large-scale wartime... (more)