Michael Humphrey is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. was appointed to the Chair in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney in February 2007. He is a graduate of Macquarie University in Anthropology and Comparative Sociology (BA Hons 1975, PhD 1983) in Sydney. He has held positions at the University of Western Sydney, Macquarie University and the University of NSW. At UNSW he was Head of School and Professor of Sociology. He has also held visiting positions at Oxford University, American University of Beirut, Coimbra University, University of Tucumán, and the Catholic University Leuven
He researched and published widely in anthropology and comparative sociology based on international fieldwork on the themes of Islam in the West; the Lebanese diaspora; the social relations of globalisation; war, political violence and terrorism; human rights, transitional justice and reconciliation; violence, displacement and urban securitisation. He has conducted field research in Australia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, South
Africa, Bosnia and Serbia. He has published more than 40 book chapters and 100 journal articles. His main book publications in the field of transitional justice are The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: from terror to trauma, Routledge (2002) and the forthcoming book (2023) with Estela Valverde, Amnesty and Transitional Justice: the judicialisation of politics for (Intersentia, Belgium).