Associate ProfessorMaria O'Sullivan

Maria is an Associate Professor at Deakin Law School with expertise in a wide range of human rights law and public law issues that impact society. She has a particular focus and passion for using human rights to protect the rights of marginalised and vulnerable groups. 

Maria holds a BA/LLB (Hons I) from the Australian National University, a Masters of International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex (with Distinction) and a PhD in Refugee Law from Monash University. 

Maria joined Deakin Law School in 2023. Prior to that she was an Associate Professor at Monash University Faculty of Law and a Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University where she led the Centre's refugee policy and advocacy work.

Maria undertakes research and actively engages with the wider community as an expert commentator in the media on topical human rights issues and is involved in submissions to inquiries at both the national and international level.  She is the Lead of the Technology-based Harms stream of the Centre for Law as Protection – an interdisciplinary research Centre dedicated to the protection of people, animals, and the environment from a variety of threats - and a member of the Deakin Cyber Research and Innovation Hub at Deakin University.

Her current body of research focuses on the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Her core project examines the right to protest, which incorporates analysis of counter-extremism measures, hate speech laws and freedom of artistic expression. She recently co-edited an international comparative study of the right to protest - A. Dastyari and M. O’Sullivan (eds), International Law and the Regulation of Protest (Routledge, 2026) - and is currently examining the use of permits for protest in Australia. In addition to her core research on protest, she is also involved in several projects on technology and freedom of expression, including a project on the use of Community Notes as a form of social media content moderation.

Maria's work has influenced case law, law reform and public debate. Her research has been cited in a judgment in the High Court of Australia (Justice Kirby in Minister for Immigration v QAAH, 2006, dissenting), by the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (in Case C‑255/19 Secretary of State for the Home Department v OA), Lord Sales of the UK Supreme Court (writing extrajudicially in 2024 and 2025), the Meta Oversight Board (in its 2026 Advisory Opinion on Community Notes), and in reports of parliamentary inquiries and law reform commissions in Australia.

She teaches Migration and Refugee Law in the undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Deakin and has experience in teaching large core units (Public Law, Administrative Law). She has supervised 16 honours students to completion and is supervising several HDR students in areas of international law and public law. She welcomes Phd, Masters and Honours students in the areas of public law, human rights law and refugee law. Prospective students can find out more about Maria's teaching and supervision experience at the 'Teaching and Supervision' tab. 

Media Inquiries

Maria can be contacted for media comment via her email: m.osullivan@deakin.edu.au

A sample of her radio interview work can be found here: What are the ethical, and legal, limits of protests at Australian universities? - ABC listen (on ABC's The Minefield) and samples of her media writing can be found here: https://theconversation.com/profiles/maria-osullivan-3599/articles.

For samples of her deeper research pieces, please see the open access publications below:

• ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Right to an Effective Remedy’ in Michał Balcerzak and Julia Kapelańska-Pręgowska (eds) Artificial Intelligence and International Human Rights Law:  Developing Standards for a Changing World  (Edward Elgar, 2024) Open Access: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035337934

• ‘Rewriting Internal Relocation from a Refugee Perspective: The Lived Experience of Refugees in Afghanistan’ (2024) 43 Refugee Survey Quarterly 190–220 (with S Mohammadi)   Open Access: doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdad024