Dr Anna Saunders is a Lecturer at the ANU Law School. She researches in international law and the history and theory of property, and the transformations of this body of law in the context of a climate-changed world. She obtained her doctorate from University College London, where she was a Modern Law Review Scholar and the recipient of a London Arts and Humanities Partnership studentship from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. She holds a JD (first class honours) and MPhil from Melbourne Law School, where she was an editor of the Melbourne Journal of International Law, and an LLM from Harvard Law School, where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She has served as an associate to Justice Susan Kenny AM at the Federal Court of Australia, and is admitted as an Australian lawyer and an officer of the Supreme Court of Victoria.
Anna’s work has been published in the American Journal of International Law, Transnational Legal Theory, and as chapters in edited volumes with leading university presses. She has been invited to give seminars on her research at Edinburgh Law School, Warwick Law School and Amsterdam Law School. She was a co-editor of the volume Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917, published with Cambridge University Press, and guest editor of a special issue on emerging scholarship for the Journal of Law and Political Economy. In 2024, Anna received the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law Article Prize for her article on international law and the political economy of constitution-making.
Areas of Expertise
- Public International Law
- International Law and Climate
- International Intellectual Property
- International Law, Science and Technology
- Law and Political Economy
- Legal History
- Legal Theory
Academic Memberships
- Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law
- European Society of International Law
- International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property
Anna researches in international law and the history and theory of property, and the transformations of this body of law in the context of a climate-changed world. Her doctoral research explored changes in the form of patents in international law after the late nineteenth century and with the shift to industrial capitalism, and the significance of that form for contemporary climate diplomacy. Other work-in-progress includes an article on theorisations of technology in lawmaking for decolonisation, and a chapter on the plural temporalities of patents in international law. She has also published more widely in the history, theory and political economy of international law, including work on international law and the history of the corporation, and European human rights and revolutionary history.
Significant research publications include:
- Anna Saunders, International Law as Industrial Discipline: Patent Form and Legal Transformation (PhD Thesis, University College London 2025).
- Anna Saunders, ‘Allende’s Workshop: Technological Diplomacy and the Stakes of Solidarity’ CIL Dialogues (20 December 2023) (published in Spanish as ‘La Diplomacia Tecnológica y los Retos de la Solidaridad’ Agenda Estado de Derecho (4 March 2024, Natalia Morales Cerda trans).
- Anna Saunders, ‘Constitution-Making as a Technique of International Law: Reconsidering the Postwar Inheritance’ (2023) 118 American Journal of International Law 251.
- Anna Saunders, ‘Law after Dominium: Thinking with Martti Koskenniemi on Sovereignty, Property and Transformation’ (2023) 13 Transnational Legal Theory 475.
- Kathryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Saunders and Ntina Tzouvala (eds), Revolutions in International Law: The Legacies of 1917 (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
- Special Section on Emerging LPE Scholarship (2021) 2(1) Journal of Law and Political Economy (guest editor with Katie Super, Miriam Shestack and Kurt Walters).
- Sundhya Pahuja and Anna Saunders, ‘Rival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International Law’ in Philipp Dann and Jochen von Bernstorff, The Battle for International Law: South–North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era (Oxford University Press, 2019) 141.
A full list of her research publications can be found here.
Anna welcomes inquiries from prospective doctoral researchers seeking supervision in her areas of expertise.
Areas she is willing to supervise in include the following:
- International Law and Property (especially Intellectual Property)
- International Law, Science and Technology
- International Law and Climate
- Law and Political Economy
- Critical Approaches to Property
- Legal History
Prior to commencing at the ANU, Anna taught courses in property law, legal history, and legal pedagogy. She maintains a particular interest in the relationship between pedagogical practice and the history and social role of the law school as an institution.
At the ANU, she teaches courses in international law, property law, and law, science and technology.
During semester, her office hours are from 3pm to 5pm on Thursdays (sign up here for an appointment).
In 2025 she is teaching the following courses:
- Principles of International Law (LAWS8182)
- Property Law (LAWS2204)
- International Law (LAWS2250)
