DrRachel Killean

Dr Rachel Killean is a Senior Lecturer and the current Associate Dean for Student Life in Sydney Law School.

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. She is the author of Victims, Atrocity and International Criminal Justice: Lessons from Cambodia (Routledge, 2018), and the co-author of Green Transitional Justice (Routledge, 2025, with Lauren Dempster), which won the LSAANZ book prize in 2025. She is the co-editor of Sexual Violence on Trial: Local and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge, 2021, with Anne-Marie McAlinden and Eithne Dowds), Conceptualising Justice: A Green Criminological Perspective (Palgrave, 2026, with Mark Hamilton and Kajsa Lundberg), and the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Peace (Elgar, 2026, with Louise Malinder and Lauren Dempster). 

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. 

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 Australian Research Council, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the UK Global Challenges Research Fund, and the British Academy, amongst others.