David Leary

Senior Research Fellow

BA, LLB (UNSW), Grad. Dip. Leg Prac (UTS), LLM (UNSW), PhD (Macq), Solicitor
Senior Research Fellow

Contact details

Room:

367 Law Building

Phone:

9385 9552

E-mail:

dleary@unsw.edu.au

View publications

Brief overview

Dr David Leary is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Law and Director, Environmental Law Specialisation (Postgraduate). His research and teaching interests include Public International Law particularly climate change law and policy, both domestic and international environmental law, the Law of the Sea and international law and the Polar Regions. His current research focuses specifically on issues relating to climate change, renewable energy and nanotechnology.

Dr Leary is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Arctic Centre http://www.arcticcentre.org/InEnglish.iw3, Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies http://www.ias.unu.edu/, and a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law http://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cel/.

Dr Leary is admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Courts of New South Wales and Western Australia and the High Court of Australia and currently holds an unrestricted practicing certificate as a Solicitor in New South Wales. Prior to entering academia he had extensive experience as a lawyer in private practice and as in house counsel for a multinational corporation.

Courses taught

Areas of expertise

Environmental Law, Climate change law and policy, Renewable energy law and policy, Law of the Sea, Nanotechnology, International Environmental Law, Biotechnology. Arctic and Antarctica.

Professional memberships and affiliations

Member of the Executive Council of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law

Member of the Asian Society of International Law.

Member of the Law Society of New South Wales.

Member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law.

Research Fellow,  Sino-Australia Centre for Coastal Zone Management, (a joint Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW) and Ocean University China Research Centre).

Member, Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets, University of New South Wales.

Rapporteur on the International Maritime Organisation for the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Oxford University Press)

Special Editor and member of the Editorial Board for 2009 of the Yearbook of Polar Law (Martinus Nijhoff) http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=32647

Editor, Special themed section on Bioprospecting in the Arctic and Antarctica for the journal Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics  http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/esep/v10/n1/

Member of the panel of book reviewers for the Law Society Journal.

Research supervision

Co-supervisor with Professor Malcolm Walter of PhD student with PhD thesis titled Public Policy Considerations for Remote and Fragile Environments.

Grants

2009-2010 Collaborator with R. Betz, I.MacGill, S. Healy, M. Diesendorf P. Twomey on CERPA grant for $20,000 for a scoping study of legal, regulatory, policy and wider institutional barriers to the widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies within Australia, and frameworks for addressing them.

2008 Faculty Research Grant for project: 'Climate change and renewable energy from the sea: A scoping study of new challenges for international and Australian environmental law and policy'.