MARY ANNE KENNY
Mary Anne Kenny graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1992. She worked for Legal Aid in WA before completing a Masters degree in International Law in
the United States.
In 1997 Ms Kenny was a founding member of Murdoch University’s clinical legal education program, Southern Communities Advocacy Legal and
Education Service (SCALES), a community legal centre which provides free legal advice, information and representation to low income earners in Kwinana and Rockingham,
as well as a state-wide service in the area of immigration. The program was the first of its kind in WA and involved law students working with clients in a community setting
in order to provide real life experience and an opportunity to work on issues of social justice. Mary Anne Kenny became the director of SCALES in 2000.
In 2002 SCALES was awarded the national human rights award in law from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
In 2002 Kenny was a principle founder of the Centre for Advocacy Support and Education for Refugees (CASE for Refugees), currently the only community legal centre in
Western Australia providing specialist legal assistance to refugees.
Mary Anne has devoted substantial volunteer time to social justice issues, working with refugee and migrant communities in particular. She has been a board member
of Amnesty International Australia and served on the management committee of several not-for-profit organisations, including ASeTTS, Youth Legal Service and Rockingham
Women’s Health Service. Kenny also worked on a human rights violation documentation project with East Timorese refugees in conjunction with the International
Commission for Jurists. She is currently working on a project to provide assistance to African women in relation to the Australian citizenship test.
She also continues to do volunteer legal immigration casework with SCALES.
In 2006 Ms Kenny was appointed to the Law Reform Commission of WA as the first female academic commissioner, and was elected Commission Chair in October 2008.
She has since been involved in significant law reform projects such as Aboriginal customary law and reforms to the law of homicide.
Kenny has researched and published extensively in the area of refugee law, with a focus on women and children. She has been a visiting scholar
at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Hastings. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Law at Murdoch University and Adjunct Senior Lecturer
at the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University of Technology.
