Specialisations

• Government accountability and responsiveness
• Federalism, regionalism and the development of public institutions
• Public integrity systems, including public interest whistleblowing
• Judicial accountability and methods

A J Brown is Professor of Public Policy and Law and program leader, Public Integrity & Anti-Corruption in the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University.  He is also a member of the board of directors of Transparency International Australia.  He has worked or consulted in all branches and at all levels of government in Australia, and has taught and researched widely in public policy, administration and accountability, and constitutional and administrative law.  His research has had a major impact on the design of public integrity systems and whistleblowing law reform around Australia and internationally, as well as on the political culture and practice of Australian federal reform.

A J joined Griffith University in 2003, after completing his PhD in constitutional history.  He was director of Integrity and Corruption Research in the Key Centre for Ethics Law Justice & Governance (2003-2004), when he was lead author of Chaos or Coherence? the first national integrity system assessment of Australia.  In 2005-2008 he was senior lecturer and senior research fellow in the Socio-Legal Research Centre, and led one of the world’s largest multi-institutional empirical studies of public interest whistleblowing, Whistling While They Work.  In 2009-2012 he was John F Kearney Professor of Public Law in Griffith Law School.

Before joining Griffith University, A J was a ministerial policy advisor in the Queensland Government (1998-1999), Associate to Justice G E ‘Tony’ Fitzgerald AC, President of the Queensland Supreme Court of Appeal (1998), senior investigation officer with the Commonwealth Ombudsman (1993-1997), and a public interest environmental advocate.
As well as leading large Australian Research Council research projects in public integrity and whistleblowing, he is an active member of the Centre’s Federalism, Regionalism and Devolution research program.  In 2006 he founded the Griffith University Federalism Project and led a large team of ARC-funded researchers in establishing the Australian Constitutional Values Survey, a national survey of public attitudes to federalism, regionalism and intergovernmental relations.

In 2008, he was a delegate to the Australia 2020 Summit.  In 2011, he was a member of the Commonwealth Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Local Government.  His biography, ‘Michael Kirby: Paradoxes & Principles’, published the same year, was a finalist for the Walkley Book Award, National Biography Award and Prime Minister’s Literary Award.

In 2012, he was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.