Kieran Pender is an honorary senior lecturer at the ANU Law School. He convenes Conflict of Laws and Federal Judicial System; he has also previously convened Labour Law and Law and Legal Institutions, and taught into Commonwealth Constitutional Law. Kieran is also an Associate Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre, where he leads the Whistleblower Project - Australia's first specialist legal service for whistleblowers. Kieran is also an award-winning journalist, with The Guardian. He was previously a senior legal advisor with the International Bar Association's Legal Policy & Research Unit in London.

Kieran serves on numerous boards and committees: he is deputy chair of sports non-profit Women Onside, an independent member of the Victorian Courts Council's Health, Safety and Culture Committee, and a member of the Law Council of Australia's Equal Opportunity Committee, the Law Society of New South Wales' Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and the advisory council of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership.

Kieran has previously been awarded the Australian Association of Constitutional Law's Saunders Prize for Excellence in Scholarship, the ACT Law Society's Young Lawyer of the Year Award and Lawyer's Weekly 30 Under 30 Pro Bono/Community Lawyer of the Year Award. He was the ANU's 2022 Young Alumnus of the Year.

Significant research publications

Thornton, Margaret, Kieran Pender and Madeleine Castles, 'Damages and Costs in Sexual Harassment Litigation: A Doctrinal, Qualitative and Quantitative Study' (2022, conducted for the Respect@Work Secretariat, Attorney-General’s Department)

Pender, Kieran, Jennifer Robinson and Phoebe Cook, ‘Whistleblowing, Secrecy and Transparency in Australia: Wither the Public Interest?’ in Julian Murphy and Nicholas Petrie (eds), Public and Criminal Law in Australia: Overlap, Intersection and Inconsistency (Federation Press, 2025)

Pender, Kieran, ‘Whistleblower Protections in Sport: The Missing Element in Australia’s Sports Integrity Framework?’ (2025) 47 Sydney Law Review (advance)

Pender, Kieran, ‘The lack of protection is unacceptable’: Protecting Whistleblowers in Royal Commissions and Inquiries’ (2026) 49 Melbourne University Law Review (advance)

Underhill, Grace and Kieran Pender, ‘Recognition in Australian Private International Law: The Tension Between De Facto and De Jure’ (2025) 26 Melbourne Journal of International Law (advance)
 

• Castles, Madeleine, Tom Hvala and Kieran Pender, ‘Rethinking Richardson: Sexual Harassment Damages in the #MeToo Era’ (2021) 49 Federal Law Review 231
• Pender, Kieran, ‘Regulating Truth and Lies in Political Advertising: Implied Freedom Considerations’ (2022) 44 Sydney Law Review 1
• Pender, Kieran, ‘How Does the Implied Freedom of Political Communication Constrain Executive Power?’ (2022) 96 Australian Law Journal 704
• Pender, Kieran, ‘Protecting Press Freedom through Human Rights Charters in Australia’ (2023) 47 Melbourne University Law Review 192
• Pender, Kieran, ‘Open Justice, Closed Courts and the Constitution: Australian and Comparative Perspectives’ (2023) 42 University of Queensland Law Journal 155
• Getnick, Neil, Gregory Krakower and Kieran Pender, ‘Whistleblowers Beyond Borders: The Globalisation of Whistleblower Protection’ in Anti-Corruption Law and Practice Report 2017: Innovation in Enforcement and Compliance (International Bar Association, May 2017)
• Pender, Kieran, ‘Red Scare on Ice: Antarctica, Australian-Soviet Relations and the International Geophysical Year’ (2017) 14 History Australia 645
• Pender, Kieran, ‘The “Price” of Justice?: Costs-Conditional Special Leave in the High Court’ (2018) 42(1) Melbourne University Law Review 149
• Pender, Kieran, ‘“Silent Members of Society”? Public Servants and the Freedom of Political Communication in Australia’ (2018) 29 Public Law Review 327
• Pender, Kieran, ‘Before the High Court – Comcare v Banerji: Public Servants and Political Communication’ (2019) 41 Sydney Law Review 131
• Pender, Kieran, Sofya Cherkasova and Anna Yamaoka-Enkerlin, ‘Compliance and Whistleblowing: How Technology will Replace, Empower and Change Whistleblowers’ in Jelena Madir (ed), FinTech: Law and Regulation (Edward Elgar, 2019)
• Pender, Kieran, Us Too? Bullying and Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession (International Bar Association, 2019)
• Pender, Kieran, 'Official Secrecy, Freedom of Information, Whistleblower Protections and Government Employee Speech: Pieces of the Same Puzzle? An Australian Perspective' in Costantino Grasso (ed), Whistleblowers: Voices of Justice (Springer, forthcoming)

View more publications on the ANU Researchers website

Link to ANU researchers profile