
Professor Tania Sourdin BA, LLB, GDLP, LLM, PhD, is the Foundation Chair and Director of the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation (ACJI) at Monash University in Australia. She is an active mediator, conciliator and adjudicator and is a member of a number of tribunals and panels. She wrote the National Mediator Accreditation Standards and has led national research projects and produced important recommendations for court and non-adversarial justice reform. She has conducted research into conflict resolution and disputant perceptions in eight courts and four independent conflict schemes and currently has three major evaluation projects in this area.
Tania has worked across Australia, in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada, the United States, the UK, the United Arab Emirates and the Pacific. As well, Professor Sourdin is the author of books (including Alternative Dispute Resolution (Thomson Reuters) – 4th ed –2012 and the Multi-Tasking Judge (Thomson Reuters 2013), articles, papers and has published and presented widely on a range of topics including mediation, conflict resolution high conflict disputants and organisational change.
Her interest in elder mediation and dispute resolution was initially prompted by her research into health care complaints (2011) and self-represented litigants (2012). Since that time, her review of family dispute resolution services and processes (2013) has shown that elderly people and their families can experience significant issues relating to quality of life issues, healthcare, financial decision making and living transitions. At Monash University, she is a member of a multi-disciplinary group that has been set up to respond to the challenges of Australia’s aging population and in addition, she leads an ACJI research project in respect of aged care dispute resolution.