Abogado (cum laude), Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Caracas - Venezuela; PhD (Yorke Prize) and LLM in international law (first class honours, Clive Parry Prize for International Law), University of Cambridge; Post-Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGDipLATHE), University of Oxford.

My main research interests are general international law, the law of State responsibility and the law on the use of force. I am also interested in the history of international law, especially the ‘long’ 19th century. My work has been published in the British Yearbook of International Law and in the Leiden Journal of International Law. A monograph based on my PhD dissertation on Justification and Excuse in International Law: Concept and Theory of General Defences was published by Cambridge University Press in January of 2018.

I have also conducted research for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, as part of the activities of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project. In 2017, I was member of the legal panel chaired by Shaheed Fatima QC tasked with producing a legal report as part of the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict, launched by the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and supported by Save the Children and Theirworld. I am currently a Research Associate of the Following Grenfell: The Human Rights and Equality Dimension project of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/following-grenfell). 

Before arriving to Cambridge, I worked for Baker&McKenzie (Caracas office) as a law-clerk and a paralegal in the criminal law and labour law departments.

Admitted to practice in Venezuela, as a member of the Caracas (Distrito Federal) Bar.

Teaching:

Lecture and supervise in International Law (Part IB and Part II), and supervise Criminal Law (Part IA)

Small-group teaching on self-defence in the Law of Armed Conflict, Use of Force and Peacekeeping (LLM) paper

Director of Studies at Queens’ College (Part IA and IB)

Other appointments and affiliations:

Member of the Management Committee of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (2016- )

Member of the Academic Research Panel of Blackstone Chambers (2015- )

Associate member of i-HILT, the History of International Law Research Group, Tilburg University (2014- )

External Professor at Universidad de La Sabana (Chía, Bogota, Colombia), Master’s program in International Law (March 2014- )

Faculty representative on the Management Committee of the Centre for Latin American Studies (October 2014-September 2018)

Scholarships and Awards

2015: Yorke Prize (Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge), in recognition of the ‘exceptional quality’ of PhD dissertation ‘which makes a substantial contribution to its field of legal knowledge’

2009-2014: Maria Luisa de Sanchez (Girton College, University of Cambridge) and Cambridge European Trusts Scholar

2008: Clive Parry Prize in International Law (Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge)