The UNESCO Chair, Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, is honoured to invite you to join us for the 2025 UNESCO Chair Oration, which will be delivered this year by Daniela Gavshon, the Australia Director of Human Rights Watch.

Gavshon will be speaking on the topic of Making the Most of Middle Power Status: Australia, Human Rights and a Changing World.

Following the Oration, UNESCO Chairholder and Deakin Distinguished Professor Fethi Mansouri will facilitate a Q and A.

Founded in 2013, the UNESCO Chair Oration is a significant annual public lecture delivered by a pre-eminent leader, advocate and/or thinker in matters related to social justice, cultural diversity and human rights.

Daniela Gavshon is the Australia director at Human Rights Watch. She leads the organization’s engagement with the Australian government on foreign and domestic policy. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she spent ten years working at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre where she founded the Truth and Accountability program. There, she led human rights and war crimes investigations and a landmark project mapping laws and policies affecting First Nations people in Australia.

From 2009-2012, Daniela was the Solomon Islands Head of Office for the International Center for Transitional Justice where she advised and supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In addition, Daniela has held positions in the Australian government foreign aid portfolio and with UN Women working on women, peace and security. She is an adjunct lecturer at the University of New South Wales.

Daniela holds degrees in law and arts from the University of Sydney and obtained a master’s in international humanitarian law from the Geneva Academy on International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. She is the Secretary of the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee, and is on the Advisory Committee of the Australian Human Rights Institute at the University of New South Wales.

The UNESCO Chair for Comparative Research on Cultural Diversity and Social Justice is based at Deakin University and hosted by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI). Deakin Distinguished Professor Fethi Mansouri has held the Chair since it was established in 2013. The Chair operates as an active ‘think and do tank’ on issues pertaining to cultural diversity and social justice locally and internationally. It serves as a key research translator and bridge builder between researchers, policy makers and civil society. You can learn more about the Chair on our website.