Policing, Security and Public Health Expert

Dr. Melissa Jardine is a global policing, security and public health expert. She is a Partner Investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on ‘Policing in the Pacific’, an Honorary Fellow, at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, The University of Melbourne, a Fellow (and founding Board Director) of the Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association and Visiting Fellow at the Australia Vietnam Policy Institute. Since 2021, Dr. Jardine has served as the Chair, Board of Directors, for the Australia Vietnam Leadership Dialogue which aims to nurture the bilateral relationship through development, education and trade.

Dr. Jardine has a long-term interest in the development of policing and security across the Asia Pacific and completed her PhD on policing in Vietnam at the UNSW Law School.  While working for international organizations such as the United Nations, INTERPOL and others, she provides advice and designs and delivers a range of international police training packages regarding HIV prevention, harm reduction approaches to drug use and sex work, police-public health leadership, gender-sensitive analyses of human trafficking, people smuggling, terrorism, violent extremism and cybercrime among others. 

She is the author of two books:

• Policing in a Changing Vietnam: Towards a Global Account of Policing, Melissa Jardine, Routledge, 2022.
• Women, Police and Security: Reforming the Afghan National Police, Melissa Jardin, Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association/Wordzworth Publishing. 2022

After commencing studying Vietnamese language at Monash University in 1997, she was the recipient of a scholarship to study Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2005 from the Victorian Multicultural Commission while working for Victoria Police and is noted as a ‘Major Event’ of 100 years of women in policing in Victoria. In 2021, Dr. Jardine began guest lecturing on research methodologies and ethics for the criminal justice program at Vietnam National University’s Law School.

Dr. Jardine was a Victoria Police officer for 10 years (2001-2011), working at the frontline and in criminal investigations, and is a current member of the Strategic Planning Committee for the International Association of Women Police (IAWP). In Victoria Police, she worked in general duties, criminal investigations, and drug taskforces and trained as an undercover operative.