Paula Gerber is one of Australia’s preeminent human rights scholars. With an illustrious career spanning over two decades, Paula has emerged as a leading authority in her field. Her extensive knowledge and deep commitment to social justice have played a pivotal role in shaping legal frameworks aimed at better protecting and upholding human rights. Through her rigorous research and insightful analyses, she has not only pushed the boundaries of legal scholarship but also influenced policymaking at both national and international levels.
Paula’s research and advocacy around the need to expunge the criminal records of men who were convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual conduct, when homosexuality was a crime, led to the Victorian Government being the first jurisdiction in Australia to establish a system for wiping these convictions from an individual’s record, and the first jurisdiction in the world to apologise to the LGBTIQ+ community for the harm these laws inflicted.
Similarly, Paula’s pioneering work into the barriers that Indigenous Australians face when accessing birth registration led to the introduction of systemic reforms to encourage and facilitate birth registration by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
In addition to her tireless advocacy for the rights of LGBTIQA+ people and Indigenous peoples, Paula is a highly sought-after teacher and public speaker on issues ranging from children’s rights, human rights education and surrogacy. She uses her ground-breaking research and the positive outcomes they contribute to as case studies in the courses she teaches, thereby training and inspiring the next generation of human rights advocates.
In addition to her human rights work, Paula is also an internationally renowned legal scholar in the niche area of construction law. She has managed to find points of intersection where she can fuse her passion for human rights with her expertise in construction law, namely, disabled access to buildings and combatting gender inequality in the male dominated construction industry.
To learn some things about Professor Gerber that you won’t glean from reading her published research and opinion pieces, take a look at “Getting to know…Paula Gerber” where you can find out what she really thinks about musicals and what was her worst job ever! An insightful profile of Professor Gerber is also available on Monash Tapestry. You can Also check out her staff profile published on the Monash University website.
Professor Paula Gerber 