Rate My Professor Rebekah Brown

Professor Rebekah Brown is Interim Vice-Chancellor and President of the Australian National University, a role she assumed in September 2025 while continuing as Provost and Senior Vice-President, a position she has held since joining the university in June 2024. In these capacities, she leads the university’s academic portfolio, strengthens coordination across colleges, academic programs, research and education priorities, drives reforms to institutional governance and accountability, and guides strategic planning with a focus on research excellence, education quality and community engagement.

An award-winning educator, researcher and academic leader, Professor Brown is internationally recognised for her contributions to environmental studies, with expertise in urban water systems, sustainable development and transdisciplinary research. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA). She holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) from Monash University and a PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of New South Wales, awarded in 2003 for her thesis on the institutionalisation of integrated urban stormwater management. Professor Brown began her career as a civil engineer delivering major infrastructure projects across the United Kingdom, Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa. Prior to ANU, she held senior leadership roles at Monash University, including Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Senior Vice-President from 2021 to 2024 and Senior Vice-Provost (Research) from 2018 to 2021. She co-founded the water-sensitive cities research platform at Monash University and played a key role in establishing the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities. As Chief Investigator, she has secured more than $123 million in external competitive research funding. Her research encompasses more than 220 publications in leading international journals including Nature and Science, with an h-index of 50 and over 12,800 citations. She has served on five international editorial boards and her work has informed policy by UN-Habitat, UNESCO and the Asian Development Bank. Professor Brown was Founding Director of the RISE program, a multi-country health research initiative on environmental resilience and health, and has established large-scale collaborative programs across Australia, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.