Brian Iselin

Brian Iselin, a dual Australian-Swedish national presently resident in Brussels, is a Senior Research Fellow with the ISDP’s Stockholm Taiwan Center and a Senior Development and Partnership Liaison.

He is the author of five books, including “Modern Slavery Beyond the Walls”, “The SME Playbook on Business and Human Rights”, “Humanising the Bottom Line”, “From Cognitive Dissonance to Corporate Accountability”, and “Understanding Corporate Human Rights Maturity”.

A six-year former Australia Army Intelligence Corps Ground Surveillance Trooper, he also served thirteen years as a Federal Agent in Australia and abroad specialising in counter-narcotics and counterintelligence. He served three years as Embassy Counsellor (Law Enforcement) in the Australian Embassy, Beijing.

Among numerous project-related roles, he was Director of the Australian contribution to the Law and Order Task Force in Iraq, Strategic Advisor to the Royal Cambodian Police, Chief Operating Officer of Global Justice Solutions, Director of Business Development for Hulla & Co Human Dynamics, Business Development Director for East West Consulting and the European Consultants Organisation, and Regional Legal Expert on Human Trafficking in the Asia-Pacific for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. He served four years on the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed Journal of Modern Slavery.

He is serving Secretary-General (seven years), as well as former CEO (six years), of international modern slavery and human rights NGO, slavefreetrade. He served two years as Vice-President (Projects) in the then Brussels-based thinktank, the EU-Asia Centre. He operated an eponymous international justice-sector consultancy from 2003-2021, conducting, amongst many other things, counter-slavery operations in global supply chains, counter-narcotics operations in Central Asia and Afghanistan, and gender-based violence/human trafficking to the European Commission’s Daphne Programme on Violence against Women. He now operates his own consultancy on business and human rights.

He holds an MA in Strategic and Defence Studies from Australia’s prestigious Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, as well as a BA in Modern Asian Studies with triple majors in Chinese language, economics, and politics. He also holds postgraduate qualifications in Police Management and International Criminal Justice, and currently studying towards a Masters in International Business Economics and Management in Brussels.