2024 Laureate Profile: Professor Jacqueline Peel – 2024 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship

Administering Organisation: The University of Melbourne

Fellowship Project Summary

FL240100065 - Transforming international law for corporate climate accountability

Professor Peel aims to transform international law’s role in raising the ambition and ensuring delivery of companies’ climate promises. By designing implementation tools with policymakers and business, and training future climate leaders in this innovative approach, this project seeks to accelerate policy and law reform for rapidly cutting corporate emissions to net zero. Professor Peel will work with policymakers and peak industry groups to co-design and apply international law tools to provide clear direction about the actions companies must take to align with global net zero goals. This project will position Australia at the forefront of action to accelerate effective corporate climate responses, supporting government efforts to step up international mitigation of climate harms, which acutely impact our environment, economy and region. In bringing together separate research areas, across different jurisdictions, Professor Peel will generate new knowledge on how international law can incentivise ambitious action and improve companies’ climate accountability. 

Ambassadorial and mentoring role 

Through the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship, Professor Peel will develop a mentoring and capacity-building program specifically for females of the Global South. This program will draw on Professor Peel’s recent academic work in climate litigation in partnership with the National University Singapore. Professor Peel will support early-to-mid-career researchers (EMCRs) to build their scholarly networks and knowledge of climate litigation for corporate accountability. By training and mentoring a significant cohort of Global South women in strategies and tools for advancing corporate climate accountability which they can use to effect change in their own communities, Professor Peel will facilitate ways to build capacity for effective climate action globally and deliver tangible benefits for the lives and livelihoods of women adversely impacted by climate change.

Australian Research Council Funding: $3,820,000