Björn Dressel is a Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU) and the former inaugural Director of the ANU Philippines Institute. His research focuses on comparative constitutionalism, judicial politics, governance, and public sector reform in Asia, with a particular emphasis on Southeast Asia.
He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a law degree from the University of Trier School of Law in Germany.
Dr. Dressel was awarded the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Research Award (2013–2019) for his work on judicial politics in Southeast Asia and is currently Chief Investigator of the ARC Discovery Project Judicial Loyalties and Resistance in Southeast Asia (2023–2026).
He has been a visiting scholar at institutions including The Asia Foundation (Manila), iCourts (Denmark), Seikei University (Japan), and the University of the Philippines College of Law.
He has consulted for international organizations such as the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, and Chemonics International, and has held teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins SAIS and Columbia University.
His work has been published in leading journals including Governance, Administration & Society, International Political Science Review, and Pacific Review. He is the author of Courts and Politics in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and the editor of The Judicialization of Politics in Asia (Routledge, 2012), as well as Informality and Courts: Comparative Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), among other co-edited volumes.
