Afshin is a Professor of International Law at the School of Law at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He earned his BSc (genetics) and LLB from the University of New South Wales, LLM from the University of Sydney, and PhD from Griffith University. Afshin’s research seeks to move the boundaries of environmental law’s concerns and focus by critiquing and reimagining it for the benefit of non-human living beings and systems. His interdisciplinary approach to the law is influenced by reading science and technology, ethics, and international relations and political theory to understand non-human relationality, creativity, and ways that they experience reality. He is particularly interested in ideas and theories about science that push traditions in that discipline and the influence that this then has on developments in law and governance.

At THE NEW INSTITUTE, Afshin was involved in the program “Governing the Planetary Commons: A Focus on the Amazon”.