Bri Lee is a Sydney-based author, academic, and activist. Her first book, a memoir called Eggshell Skull, was published in June 2018 and won several major awards. It explores sexism in the legal industry and justice system, and tells the story of how many barriers women – including Bri herself – face when trying to access justice. She is now a well-known advocate for criminal justice law reform. Together with Prof. Jonathan Crowe (Bond University) Bri co-authored a paper detailing problems with Queensland’s consent and ‘mistake of fact’ laws and after a long campaign the Queensland Attorney-General referred the issue to the Law Reform Commission.
She was recognised for this work by being named one of the Australian Financial Review’s ‘Women of Influence’. In 2021, together with the Women’s Justice Network, Bri launched the ‘fREADom Inside’ initiative which gets more and better books to women incarcerated in New South Wales.
Bri has a law degree (Hons), a creative writing MPhil, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney Law School where she has lectured in media law. She is qualified to practice law, but doesn’t. Bri’s doctoral thesis is about defamation proceedings for ‘public interest’ journalism – a topic she has written and spoken about at length.
