Ronli Sifris is an Associate Professor in Monash University’s Faculty of Law and Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. She completed a LLM as a Hauser Scholar at NYU School of Law and a PhD at Monash University.

Her research is doctrinal, empirical and interdisciplinary. It is predominantly focused on issues at the intersection of women’s reproductive health and the law (at both the domestic and international level) including abortion, surrogacy, assisted reproduction and involuntary sterilisation. Further, her research spans other spheres of health law, human rights and gender. For example, she has conducted research on: conscientious objection in the context of voluntary assisted dying; the impact of climate change on vulnerable groups and is currently working on a project focussed on protecting the human rights of trans and gender diverse people.

She has published two sole authored books: Reproductive Freedom, Torture and International Human Rights: Challenging the Masculinisation of Torture (Routledge, 2014) and Towards Reproductive Justice (Monash University Publishing, 2024) and is currently writing a third book on surrogacy law, policy and practice.

In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, Ronli has Co-Edited two special issues of high quality journals; an issue of the Griffith Law Review focusing on “Gender, Health and the Law” and an issue of the Journal of Law and Medicine focusing on “Commercial Surrogacy – What Role of Law”. She has also been an Editorial Board Member of the Australian Journal of Human Rights.

Further, in an effort to influence real legal change she has made submissions to a number of different Parliamentary Inquiries / Law Reform Commission Inquiries and has been cited / quoted in the resulting reports. She achieved significant research impact when the High Court of Australia accepted her application to appear as “amicus curiae” to assist in its deliberations on a constitutional challenge in the case of Clubb v Edwards and extensively quoted her empirical research in the final judgment.

Ronli is also a regular commentator in the media, having appeared on live television such as the BBC World News and written for outlets such as The Conversation and The Guardian.

You can find her on Twitter @RonliSifris and some of her papers on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/author=1444937.

Areas of Expertise