Katharine Gelber is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Queensland and Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the July 2018 World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Brisbane. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, an elected member of the Academic Board, University of Queensland 2018-2020 and a former President of the Australian Political Studies Association and still serves on its Executive Committee.

Professor Gelber’s research expertise is in freedom of speech, human rights and public discourse. She is the recipient of several ARC grants on these topics, including a Future Fellowship (2012-2015): ‘Free Speech After 9/11’. In November-December 2017, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Global Freedom of Expression Project, Columbia University, New York. She also jointly hosted, with Prof Susan Brison, a workshop at the Princeton University Center for Human Values on, ‘Free Speech and its Discontents’. In 2014, with Prof Luke McNamara, she was awarded the Mayer journal article prize for the best article in the Australian Journal of Political Science in 2013. In 2011 she was invited by the United Nations to be the Australian Expert Witness at a regional meeting examining States’ compliance with the free speech and racial hatred provisions of international law. In 2009 she presented the Mitchell Oration in Adelaide on the topic ‘Freedom of Speech and its Limits’.