Mr Adam McCarthy is Chief Legal Officer and First Assistant Secretary, Legal Division at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Prior to this he was acting First Assistant Secretary, Multilateral Policy Division at DFAT. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Australia’s High Commissioner to South Africa with non-resident accreditation to Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).  Until March 2015, he was Assistant Secretary, Africa Branch. Prior to that Mr McCarthy served as Deputy High Commissioner to the United  Kingdom and Australian Representative to the Commonwealth Board of Governors from April 2009 until December 2012. 

A senior career DFAT officer, Mr McCarthy has previously served overseas as First Secretary (Political) at the Australian High Commission in Wellington (1996-99) and  Counsellor (Trade Policy) at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC (2002-2006). In Canberra, Mr McCarthy has worked in a range of positions primarily in the multilateral, trade, legal and arms control fields, including from 2006 to 2009 as Assistant Secretary, International Legal Branch. After graduating from the University of Sydney with honours degrees in Economics and Law,  
Mr McCarthy practiced as a solicitor before joining DFAT in 1993. He also holds Graduate Diplomas in Legal Practice (University of Technology Sydney) and Foreign Affairs and Trade (Monash University). 

Ntina joined the ANU College of Law as a Senior Lecturer in July 2020 and was promoted to Associate Professor in January 2022. Prior to this appointment, she was an ARC Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She obtained her PhD from Durham Law School (UK) in 2016 and she also worked as a lecturer at the same institution.

Her work focuses on the political economy, history and theory of international law. She is especially interested in historical materialism, deconstruction, feminist and queer legal theory.  Her first monograph, Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law, was published by Cambridge University Press in late 2020. Her book was awarded the 2022 ASIL Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship and the Australian Legal Research Award (ALRA) in the book category.  In addition, it was shortlisted for the Deutscher Prize and was awarded a honourable mention in the context of the 2021 Sussex Prize in International Theory.  Her work has also appeared in leading journals, including the European Journal of International Law, the Leiden Journal of International Law and the Journal of International Economic Law. 

Between 2019 and 2021 Ntina was a founding member of the editorial collective of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review. In early 2020, she was appointed Senior Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. 

Jeeven Nadanakumar is currently the Assistant Director of the Ukraine taskforce at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). In Canberra, he has served in various roles including on international treaty law and the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has served on a diplomatic posting at the Australian High Commission Islamabad, during which he worked on human rights, religious extremism, law reform, human development and disaster preparedness in Pakistan. In recognition of his contribution to Australia’s largest humanitarian refugee evacuation operation following the fall of Kabul in 2021, he was awarded on Australian Operational Service Medal (Civilian).

Prior to joining DFAT, Mr Nadanakumar completed an internship within the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank in Washington DC, working on governance and anti-corruption research. While a student at the Australian National University (ANU), he worked for World Vision Australia, educating thousands of young Australians about global hunger and inspiring them to fundraise through the 40 Hour Famine. He has visited World Vision projects in Cambodia and attended high level events in New York during the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Mr Nadanakumar represented the Attorney-General’s Department at the 2015 Leaders and Youth Summits on Countering Violent Extremism on the sidelines of UN Leaders Week in New York. He has previously worked for the federal Member of Parliament for Canberra and volunteered with charitable and advocacy groups. In 2015 Jeeven was named the ACT’s Young Multicultural Person of the Year.