Brad’s background

I graduated from Monash University in the class of 2001 with first-class Honours degrees in Science and Law. My Science major was Geography. My Honours dissertation analysed environmental aspects of energy policies in New South Wales and Victoria. My research focus in my law degree was the implementation of multilateral environmental treaties by Vietnam. I was a member of the editorial committee of the Monash Law Review in 1999 and an Assistant Editor in 2000.

I worked with Freehills’ (now Herbert Smith Freehills’) environmental and planning law and project development groups from 2001 until 2006, including as a qualified lawyer from 2003.

In my role as a lawyer, I advised corporate, government and not-for-profit clients on environmental impact assessment, administrative law, land use planning, property development, land access, heritage, native title, mining law, and pollution and contamination law.

Significant matters I worked on included:

• Environment Effects Statement process for the Channel Deepening Project
• Planning controls for the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village
• Environmental due diligence of the Mitcham to Frankston Freeway
• Land access negotiations for the Basslink electricity interconnector and Victorian gas transmission pipelines
• Leasing for large Melbourne retail property owner and property contract and development advice for a development in Docklands
• Resource Planning and Development Commission process for the northern Tasmanian pulp mill
• Advice for Ballarat Goldfields
• Supreme Court tort litigation concerning contamination at Barkly Street, Brunswick

While working at Freehills I also volunteered as a lawyer at the Environment Defenders Office (now Environmental Justice Australia) and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

In 2007 I completed my Masters of Philosophy in Environment, Society, and Development with the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. I took papers on Environmental Ethics and Policy, Conservation and Society, Culture and Development, and Political Ecology. My dissertation explored environmental value conflicts in the debate over wind energy in Victoria and the UK.

I commenced employment and study for my Doctorate of Philosophy at the ANU College of Law in late 2007. My PhD thesis was awarded best thesis in the Australian Legal Research Awards among its graduating year.

At the ANU I taught across the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees offered by the ANU College of Law and supervised students in the Fenner School of Environment and Society, as well as collaborating on a larger research project with the School of Sociology. I researched and advocated for reform of environmental assessment laws, investigated conflicts over, and regulation of, marine protected areas, including the Great Barrier Reef, and critiqued environmental laws using environmental ethic, value and philosophy positions and using social science methodologies, particularly discourse analysis and case study inquiry.

I progressed my PhD research project into environmental justice in Australian environmental laws, and engaged in scholarly discussions about the growth of the field of law and geography in an Australian context. I contributed to public understanding over wind farm regulation and debates, and about risk and resilience in peri-urban and rural environments. I was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where I worked alongside researchers in the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

My research work was funded by the ANU College of Law, the Vice Chancellor’s Travel Fund, and the Energy Pipelines CRC.

In 2012 I commenced employment as a Lecturer at Melbourne Law School within The University of Melbourne. During 2016 I spent time as a visitor at The University of Oxford’s Faculty of Law and Wolfson College, where I researched and deployed novel case study methodology in environmental law and legal geography and land use conflict. In 2019 I was a visitor at UCL Faculty of Laws’ Centre for Law and the Environment, where I researched rural and material planning conflicts, queer planning and heritage law, and environmental discourses and environmental populism. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2020. In 2021 I undertook a research project into community values in Victorian planning law. I have taught extensively, including creating innovative curricular that has been recognised by my peers and the government, researched on important and relevant topics, and shared my scholarly findings.

My time at Melbourne Law School is more fully profiled here.