Sarah Teitt

Dr Sarah Teitt is Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.

Her expertise centres on the intersection of atrocity prevention, civilian protection, and peacebuilding in the Asia Pacific region, with a particular interest in China’s impact and evolving roles in these areas. Her work has been published in journals such as Cooperation and Conflict, International Peacekeeping, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Survival, the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and Global Governance. She is co-editor of the volumes China-North Korea Relations: Between Development and Security (2020) and Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security: Aligning the Protection Agendas (2013), and she currently serves on the editorial team of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. From 2019 to 2025, she was an Australian Research Council DECRA Senior Research Fellow.

Sarah’s work is grounded in a commitment to ensuring research is relevant, accessible, and useful for improving atrocity prevention policy and practice. She has extensive experience in designing and delivering training, executive education and policy dialogue programs, including for the United Nations (UN) Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, UN Women, the UN Staff System College, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission for Human Rights, the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, as well as numerous government-affiliated think tanks and research institutes across the Asia Pacific region.

She was founder and lead convenor of the annual Australia-China Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect from 2014-2020, co-hosted by the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the China Institute of International Studies--a think tank affiliated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

In 2016, Sarah co-founded the Asia Pacific Partnership for Atrocity Prevention (APPAP), an alliance of organizations from across the Asia Pacific region working toward the prevention of atrocity crimes and the protection of vulnerable populations. From 2017-2020, she served as the Co-Chair of APPAP's Gender Working Group, and currently is the lead convenor of the APPAP Secretariat.