PROFESSOR TANIA SOURDIN

Professor Tania Sourdin is the Foundation Director and Professor of the Monash Australian Centre for Court and Justice Innovation (ACCJSI). She is also a Visiting Professor at Sydney University. She was previously the Director of the Conflict Resolution Research Centre at La Trobe University (2002 to 2008) and has led numerous evaluation and research reform projects.

Professor Sourdin is an internationally-renowned scholar, researcher and practitioner in the conflict resolution field. She is an advanced accredited mediator in Australia and has practised around the world including within the Asian Pacific area as well as the Middle East (and as a special expert adviser to the United Arab Emirates). She has worked throughout the Pacific for the IMF (and World Bank) and continues to work on assignments that are directed at developing dispute resolution capacity in domestic dispute resolution.

She is recognised as a leading mediator and adjudicator and has had membership for more than a decade of the Australian Appellate Tribunal that reviews lower Administrative Tribunal decisions in Australia. Her conflict resolution practice focusses on complex dispute resolution and management and deals with toxic conflict and she is an expert with the High Conflict Institute in San Diego California. Her areas of practice include executive, workplace, commercial, intergovernmental, interpersonal and complex conflict situations and she is an advanced panel mediator on a number of panels.

Professor Sourdin has held a number of senior policy and advisory appointments with the Australian National Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Council (NADRAC) (for more than 10 years), the Standards Commission of the International Mediation Institute, was Deputy Chair of the Australian Mediator Standards Board in 2012, is a member of the Building a Civil Justice Evidence Base (Commonwealth Attorney Generals), Co Chair of the International Research Collaborative relating to Judicial Dispute Resolution and also holds other current appointments with professional bodies the Law Council of Australia, Australian Tax office Committees and charitable and pro bono organisations.

Professor Sourdin has written numerous books including Alternative Dispute Resolution (now in a 4th ed, 2012, Thomson Reuters) and is the General editor Thomsons Looseleaf Service on Alternative Dispute Resolution, She has written widely in the area of dispute resolution and has conducted evaluative empirical research in respect of nine courts and five dispute resolution schemes. She wrote the Australian National Mediator Accreditation Standards that have been in use since 2008 and more recently completed the Australian Law Council Collaborative Practice Guidelines. She has also won two Australian Research Council Research Projects in the area of Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Dispute Resolution.

She has been a keynote speaker in many international and domestic conferences with particular expertise in conflict resolution, technology, justice and mediation. ACCJSI has a number of current and past projects in the Justice innovation area and is linked to international centres. Her PhD work was used as a template to review and evaluate the justice system within Australia and her methodologies have been relied upon in civil justice review work around the world.

Contact Email: tsourdin@endispute.com.au