Melanie O'Brien

O'Brien obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and French and a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Newcastle in Australia, and a master's degree in international human rights law at Lund University in Sweden. In 2010, she obtained her PhD in international law from the University of Nottingham in the UK, for research studying whether national or international jurisdiction for criminal accountability for sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers against women would be more effective. O'Brien's conclusion is that national level criminal procedures would be "far more likely and far more effective".

Since 2022 or earlier, and as of 2025, O'Brien holds an associate professor position in international law at the University of Western Australia. O'Brien was a research fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum in 2022. In 2023, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Loughborough. During 2023–2025, she held visitor positions at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Law School Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota.

O'Brien has been the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars during the 2021–2023 and 2023–2025 electoral terms.

O'Brien's fields of research include the relations between sexual and gender-based violence against women, atrocities such as genocide and human rights.

O'Brien has been an amicus curiae for the International Criminal Court, which has cited her forced marriage research.