Dr. Eileen O'Brien is a Professor of Law in the School of Law. She brings over twenty years of academic leadership in research, teaching, and administration. Throughout her career, she has contributed to faculty, university, NGO, and government committees and boards, provided advice to government and industry, served as an academic member of the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, and led and contributed to national research projects and government-commissioned research spanning four states and the Commonwealth. 

Eileen's research sits at the intersection of property law and the law of ageing, with a particular focus on what the law does - and too often fails to do - for older people navigating housing insecurity and homelessness. She is especially interested in the experiences of older women, and of those whose vulnerability is compounded by ethnicity, cultural background, sexuality, or caring and family responsibilities that have shaped their financial position across the life course. Her work recognises that housing precarity in later life is rarely the result of a single event; it accumulates through decades of interrupted employment, unpaid care work, relationship breakdown, and limited asset accumulation — factors that disproportionately affect women and other marginalised groups. Eileen's scholarship also addresses elder abuse in its many forms, with a particular emphasis on financial abuse - including the fraudulent misuse of substituted decision-making instruments such as enduring powers of attorney - and the ongoing debate about whether elder abuse should be recognised and prosecuted as a distinct criminal offence. Her research extends to residential and in-home aged care, examining the legal frameworks that govern older people's rights, safety, and dignity in care settings. Across all of these areas, property law sits at the heart of her analysis: questions of ownership, tenure, security of occupation, and asset protection are rarely abstract for older people - they are the practical foundations of safety, autonomy, and wellbeing in later life. By bringing property law and ageing law into sustained conversation, Eileen's scholarship aims to expose the structural gaps that leave older Australians at risk, and to advocate for legal and policy responses that reflect the realities of their lives.