Kieran Pender is a senior lawyer in the Democratic Freedoms team at the Human Rights Law Centre. He works to protect Australia’s whistleblowers, fight secrecy, defend free speech and prevent mass surveillance. He was recently named the ACT Law Society’s Young Lawyer of the Year.

Kieran graduated with the university medal from The Australian National University (ANU), where he is now an honorary lecturer at the ANU College of Law. He has published multiple book chapters and articles in Australia’s leading law journals, and in 2019 was awarded the Australian Association of Constitutional Law’s Saunders Prize for Excellence in Scholarship.

Prior to joining the Human Rights Law Centre, Kieran was a senior legal advisor with the International Bar Association’s Legal Policy & Research Unit in London.

Kieran led the IBA’s work on whistleblower protections; he coordinated Whistleblower Protections: A Guide (2018) and co-authored Are Whistleblowing Laws Working? A Global Study of Whistleblower Protection Litigation (2021). He has spoken about whistleblowing at fora including the United Nations, World Bank, European Parliament, OECD and B20.

Kieran is also a writer, contributing to The Guardian, The Saturday Paper and The Monthly. He won a Sport Australia Sports Media Award in 2020 (with Mike Bowers) and was a finalist in the 2021 Walkey Foundation Young Australian Journalist of the Year Awards. He has reported from post-conflict zones and covered the Olympics, World Cup and Tour de France.

Kieran is passionate about diversity, inclusion and equality. While at the IBA, he authored the Us Too? report on bullying and sexual harassment within the law. Kieran serves on the advisory council of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, a joint initiative of the ANU and King’s College London, and the diversity and inclusion committee of the NSW Law Society. He is also a director of Women Onside and a co-founder of Football Rising.