Greater Melbourne Area
Professor Carolyn Evans is Vice-Chancellor and President of Griffith University. She has held this role since February 2019. She is also Chair of the Innovative Research University network, President of AHEIA, and a board member of Open Universities Australia. She is a member of Chief Executive Women and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law. Prior to her appointment at Griffith, she was a Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne with responsibility for graduate students and international relations. She was Dean of the Melbourne Law School from 2011 until 2017. Carolyn has degrees in Arts and Law from Melbourne University and a doctorate from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford she held a stipendiary lectureship for two years before returning to Melbourne in 2000. She worked for a period as a lawyer at Blake Dawson Waldron after graduating from Melbourne. She was previously the Honorary Secretary to the Victorian Rhodes Scholarships Selection Committee and a member of the Board of the State Library of Victoria. In 2010, Carolyn was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to allow her to travel as a Visiting Fellow at American and Emory Universities. Carolyn is the author or editor of six books on human rights and numerous articles and chapters. She is an internationally recognised expert on religious freedom and the relationship between law and religion and has spoken on these topics in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Greece, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Malaysia, Nepal and Australia.