Professional Affiliation

Senior Lecturer in War Studies, King's College London, United Kingdom

Expert Bio

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where I teach courses on aspects of contemporary warfare and international relations, contemporary history, war crimes and post-conflict justice. The latter reflect my research interests, which lie at the nexus of international law and international politics, in particular in relation to the relationship between war crimes, war and legitimacy and issues of peace and justice. Recently, I turned my attention to the series of war crimes cases concerning British forces operating in Iraq in 2003-4. A number of cases were brought in civilian and military courts, but so far only one conviction has been made for war crimes. The cases raised serious questions about the conduct of British forces and the capacity of the existing system of military justice to deal with allegations of abuse – especially given that such allegations were highly politically charged given the controversy surrounding the overall operation and there was considerable ambiguity about which rules applied in relation to the treatment of detainees, in particular. What is clear from all of this is that the law and its application has to catch up in order to deal with situations such as Iraq where British and other Western forces were operating in difficult and highly complex environments, where the lines between combatant and non-combatant were blurred and where any political and legal legitimacy deficit – perceived or otherwise – had a marked impact. The effect of all of this on the conduct of military operations is beginning to become apparent, but its full implications have yet to be fully realised.My Wilson Center project returns to the subject of my doctoral thesis on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. For my Ph.D., I focused on the establishment and operation of the Tribunal, in particular its ability to manage its role as an instrument of international peace and security – and the dilemmas such a role raised for an international judicial institution. In the intervening years, my research has included consideration of the numerous other mechanisms for international and/or post-conflict justice established since the ICTY, including work on the Special Court for Sierra Leone, funded by the British Academy and the United States Institute for Peace. Now, with the ICC operating and intervening in conflicts in Africa, in particular, the time is ripe for asking further questions about the relationship between international criminal justice processes and international peace and security, about which lessons may be learned from the experience of the ICTY and the international community in the Western Balkans. My hope is that this will shed some light on ongoing debates surrounding the role of the ICC in peace processes in Sudan and Uganda, in particular. The circumstances are obviously very different, but the experience of the ICTY will at the very least highlight key questions to be asked, and, I suspect, demonstrate the complexities of using such an approach in practice.

 

Education

B.A.(1991) International History and Politics, University of Leeds, UK; M.A. (1996) War Studies, King's College London, UK; Ph.D. (2001) War Studies, King's College London, UK

 

Experience

Senior Lecturer, War Studies, King's College London, UK (current)

Commissioning Editor, Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.

Research Associate, Centre for International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK

 

Expertise

International Law (Laws of War; Use of Force); Transitional (post conflict justice)

Wilson Center Project

"International Peace and Security and International Criminal Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Western Balkans"

Project Summary

This project will set out to examine the major contributions to the restoration and maintenance of peace made by the ICTY in the Western Balkans region, focusing on the experience of the Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia in particular in order to better understand the potential role and pitfalls of using international peace.

Major Publications

• The Military on Trial: The British Army in Iraq (Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2008).
  
  (with Eirin Mobekk), Peace and Justice: Seeking Accountability after War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).
• The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Law, Politics and Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2004).