Associate Professor Stella Tarrant is a graduate of the University of Western Australia (B.Juris (Hon) first class) and Yale University (LLM). She began her career as Associate to Justice Toohey of the High Court of Australia and a solicitor in the Land and Heritage Unit of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia. She studied as a Harkness Fellow and Fulbright Scholar in the United States before joining the Law Faculty at the University of Western Australia, from 1996-2002. After raising her two sons in their early years, Associate Professor Tarrant returned to teaching at UWA Law School in 2009 and resumed her research career in 2013.

Her research focuses on criminal law, criminal law theory and gender and the law. She has explored the impact of law on women's lives and the part law plays in maintaining gender relations in society, in the areas of criminal law, constitutional law and reproductive technology law. Her current research projects concern gender equality in the law of self-defence and the incorporation of philosophical method into the teaching of Gender and the Law.

Associate Professor Tarrant's teaching interests are criminal law, evidence and gender and the law. At UWA she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence and Gender and the Law, and has taught feminist jurisprudence in LLB, LLM and SJD courses.