Dr Cristy Clark is an Associate Professor at the University of Canberra Law School. Her research focuses on the intersection of human rights and the environment, including issues of legal geography, Indigenous rights, and the commons. She has been published in leading academic journals, books, and popular media. Her co-authored book, ‘The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice’, is published by Edinburgh University Press. Her forthcoming book, Legal Geographies of Water: The Spaces, Places and Narratives of Human-Water Relations, will be published by Routledge on 26 June 2025.

Cristy completed a BA/LLB(Hons) at ANU, a master’s degree in international social development at UNSW, and PhD with the Australian Human Rights Centre at UNSW. Her thesis focused on the realisation of the human right to water in the context of neoliberal water governance reforms in the global south.

Cristy is an Affiliate member of the Centre for Environmental Governance, Co-convenor of the Climate Equality Working Group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, a member of the editorial board of Legalities, and a member of the Australian Discrimination Law Experts Group and the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Network of Australia and New Zealand.

In her work, Cristy draws on her past professional experience as an environment and planning law solicitor, and human rights expert with the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the ACT government.

Cristy is currently working on two climate justice projects - one funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) on Intersectionality and Gender Diverse Climate Change Action in the Pacific, and one focused on adapting equality and anti-discrimination law to better respond to climate change.