Tim McCormack is the Foundation Australian Red Cross Professor of International Humanitarian Law (appointed 1996) at the Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne and the Foundation Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law – a collaborative initiative (established 2001) between the University of Melbourne Law School and The Australian Defence Force Legal Service. He acted as amicus curiae on international law matters to the judges of Trial Chamber III of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague for the trial of Slobodan Milošević from November 2002 to March 2006.

Tim is a graduate of the University of Tasmania (LL.B. Hons. - 1982) and of Monash University (Ph.D. - 1990). He was the first Australian recipient of a Golda Meir Postdoctoral Fellowship to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1989 and in 2003 he was awarded a University of Tasmania Foundation ‘Outstanding Graduate’ Award. He has taught various graduate and undergraduate courses in several Australian Law Schools ( Tasmania, Monash, ANU and Melbourne) and at the Universities of Virginia, Auckland and Jerusalem. He has regularly lectured graduate recruits in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and to ADF officers - particularly at the Army Command and Staff College, Queenscliff (until 2001); the tri-service Staff College in Canberra and the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra. Tim has developed Australia’s first graduate coursework specialization in International Humanitarian Law and an internationally unique specialist graduate program in Military Law at the University of Melbourne. Tim is heavily involved in the teaching of Military Operations Law (with significant IHL components) to ADF Legal Officers as well as to legal officers, operators and planning staff from militaries in the Asia Pacific Region. In these roles Tim has been contributing to the development of a culture of respect for the Rule of Law in the ADF and amongst regional militaries.

Tim was a National Vice-President of Australian Red Cross (1999-2002) and chaired the Australian Red Cross National Advisory Committee on International Humanitarian Law (1994-2002). In 2001 Tim was awarded the Australian Red Cross Medal for outstanding volunteer service to the organization. Tim is a member of the Australian Foreign Minister’s newly established National Consultative Committee on International Security Issues and a member of the Foreign Minister’s National Consultative Group on Biosecurity Issues. He has participated with Australian Government delegations to multilateral treaty negotiations in New York, Geneva, The Hague and Rome. He has also provided international legal advice to the Department of Defence – particularly on international legal aspects of the INTERFET Operation in East Timor. Tim is regularly invited to speak at international conferences – most recently in Singapore at the US Pacific Commander’s Annual Military Operations Law Conference (April 2005) and in Newport, Rhode Island at the US Naval War College Annual International Law Conference (June 2005).

Tim has established one of the world’s strongest concentrations of research higher degree work in International Humanitarian Law currently supervising 20 doctoral students. He has also published extensively in the area of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. He is the general editor (with Christopher Greenwood of the London School of Economics) of the world’s first academic book series dedicated to International Humanitarian Law Series (with Martinus Nijhoff Publishers in Leiden) and has co-edited the second volume of the series with Helen Durham - The Changing Face of Conflict and the Efficacy of International Humanitarian Law. He also co-edited with Gerry Simpson The Law of War Crimes: National and International Approaches. Tim is editor-in-chief of the prestigious international journal the Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law and is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the following academic journals: Global Change and Collective Security, the Journal of Conflict and Security Law, the International Criminal Law Review, Jurnal Hukum Humaniter (Journal of Humanitarian Law, Trisakti University, Jakarta) and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.