Jane McAdam

Jane Alexandra McAdam (born 1974) is an Australian legal scholar, and expert in climate change and refugees. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of NSW, and is the inaugural Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. She was awarded an Order of Australia in 2021 for “distinguished service to international refugee law, particularly to climate change”.

Career McAdam is the centre director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law (UNSW) and a Scientia Professor of Law. She holds or has held positions external to her current role, as a Senior Fellow at both The Brookings Institution, in the United States, and at the University of Oxford, as well as the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway, and Refugee Law Initiative, London.

She works on issues surrounding the human rights and legal issues around asylum seekers and refugees from climate change and climate disasters, including flooding, rising sea levels, rising temperatures and bushfires, as well as international travel around Covid restrictions.

Specifically, McAdam's research focusses on the policy and legal responses that occur due to the impacts of climate change, and in particular, relocation that may be required due to climate change. Over the course of her career she has won a number of international prizes for her work on human rights, including for research on climate change and forced migration. She is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law. and the suite of climate change issues that negatively impact people, including fires, floods, and rising water levels. For example she wrote about the Australian's displaced due to bushfires, where the 2019-2020 Black Summer January fires saw 65,000 displaced from their homes, These bushfires lead to 35 deaths, burned 18.6 million ha, and destroyed over 5,900 buildings and 2,799 homes.

McAdam also has provided commentary around the policy of restrictions on people returning home to Australia in 2020-2021 following Covid-19 and the legal issues surrounding government restrictions. McAdam has also written about the cost, legal and ethical issues of keeping refugees on Nauru and Manus Island.

McAdam has contributed to The Conversation extensively, writing and providing commentary around refugee children, Manus island, and the policies around asylum seekers. She has also conduced fact checking for The Conversation around publicly made claims surrounding climate refugee numbers and estimates.

Select publications As of December 2021, McAdam has an H number of over 30, and over 6,000 citations from her work, according to Google Scholar.

The refugee in international law, Guy S Goodwin-Gill, Jane McAdam (2021) Refugee rights and policy wrongs: A frank up-to-date guide by experts, Jane McAdam & Fiona Chong (2019) Climate change, forced migration, and international law, Jane McAdam (2012) Swimming against the Tide: Why a Climate Change Displacement Treaty is Not the Answer, J McAdam (2011) International Journal of Refugee Law 23 (1), 2-27

Prizes and awards 2026 – Winner, Gerda Henkel Prize 2023 – Australian Laureate Fellow 2021 – Officer of the Order of Australia 2017 – Winner, International Calouste Gulbenkian Prize for human rights 2017 – Finalist, NSW Premier’s Award for Woman of the Year 2016 – Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences 2015 – Global category of Westpac 100 Women of Influence 2015 – Australia’s top 10 Women of Influence 2013 – Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum