Professor Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub (appointed July 2020). She was previously the Deputy Head of School (Research) in the Griffith Law School and prior to joining Griffith was the Director of Studies at the ANU Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy. With Professor Sara Davies, Susan is co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network. Sue also leads the Climate Justice theme of the new Griffith Climate Action Beacon. and is the founder of the EveryGen coalition working for the rights of future generations.
Susan was the 2021 winner of the Fulbright Scholarship in Australian-United States Alliance Studies (funded by DFAT) and was hosted by Georgetown University in Washington DC in 2022. She was named a Top Innovator by Uplink World Economic Forum for the Climate Justice Challenge in 2022 for creating the www.climatejusticeobservatory.com.au. She won the Bertha Lutz Prize for research on women in diplomacy awarded by the Centre for International Studies & Diplomacy and The Diplomatic Studies Section (DPLST) of the International Studies Association (ISA) in 2021.
Susan provided the independent Human Rights Assessment for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2032 Bid in 2020 and was the Human Rights Adviser to GOLDOC for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Susan has won over $1.2 million in research funding. Her Australian Research Council Future Fellow project (2015-2020) was called ‘Trading’ Women’s Rights in Transitions: Designing Diplomatic Interventions in Afghanistan and Myanmar. Her monograph will be released in the Harvard Institute for Law and Global Policy Series for Anthem Press in 2023. She also holds a 2020-2023 ARC Discovery grant as lead CI with Professor Michele Foster and A/Prof Kylie Burns ($276,968) for the project Adjudicating Rights for a Sustainable National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Susan is the editor of Futures of International Criminal Justice (Routledge 2022, with Emma Palmer, Edwin Bikundo and Martin Clark), the Research Handbook for Feminist Engagement with International Law (Edward Elgar 2019, with Kate Ogg); and author of Gender and Transitional Justice: The Women of Timor Leste (Routledge, 2010) and over 46 refereed academic works.
She often acts as a policy adviser to government, provides executive education to the Diplomatic Academy, Queensland Public Sector Commission, ONI and the Australian War College and produces policy papers. Susan was selected as an expert for the official Australian delegation to the 58th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2014. She has provided policy advice on the UNSC, G20, IORA and MIKTA. She was part of the Think20 process for Australia’s host year of the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane 2014, the Turkish Presidency in 2015 and the Chinese Presidency in 2016. She attended the St Petersburg Summit in 2013 and the Brisbane Summit in 2014. Sue was one of the two Australian representatives to the W20 in Turkey, China and Germany. She worked as a Research Associate with the Chatham House Gender and Growth Initiative on this work, producing the Bellagio Declaration on Gender and the G20.
Sue was awarded the Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Award in 2002, selected as participant in the 2020 Summit 2008 by then Prime Minister Rudd, and awarded the Future Summit Leadership Award, 2008, by the Australian Davos Connection (part of the World Economic Forum). In 2014 she was named one of the Westpac and Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence in the Global category. She was named one of 100 global gender experts by Apolitical 2018, and one of 20 Queensland Voices Female Leaders in 2019.
Sue was previously the Advocacy lead at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID). She has also worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the National Council of Churches and the Parliamentary Library.
