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Professor of International Law
Interests
Sarah Nouwen is on leave from Cambridge to occupy a Chair in Public International Law at the European University Institute (Sept 2020 - Sept 2026).
Trained in both international law and international relations, Sarah Nouwen works on the intersections of law and politics, war and peace and justice and the rule of law. Building on her experience in diplomacy and peace negotiations, her research focuses on how international law plays out in concrete situations. It combines doctrinal analysis and theory with empirical research and draws on law, politics, and anthropology.
Her book Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013) explores whether, how and why the complementarity principle in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has had a catalysing effect on the legal systems of Uganda and Sudan. She spent many months in both countries, interviewing officials, observing proceedings and searching documents to discover whether domestic legal reforms have taken place in response to the Court’s involvement. She also served as a Visiting Professional for an ICC judge.
Her article on the research behind her book, "`As you set out for Ithaka': Practical, Epistemological, Ethical and Existential Questions About Socio-legal Empirical Research in Conflict", won the Leiden Journal of International Law Prize for best article published in 2013-2015. The jury praised the work for being "truly interdisciplinary and empirically grounded".
Her current research programme "Peacemaking: What's Law Got to Do with It", funded by a Philip Leverhulme Prize, an ESRC Future Research Leaders Grant and the Newton Trust, explores the role of international law in peace negotiations.
Research centres and interest groups
CV / Biography
Sarah Nouwen is an Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law, contributor to EJIL: Talk! and co-host of EJIL: The Podcast!.
She lectures and supervises Public International Law; International Criminal Law; International Human Rights Law and Transitional Justice at both undergraduate and graduate level.
She was a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, a Senior Fellow of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston, a visiting scholar at the Free University Amsterdam and a Research Associate of the Refugee Law Project, Makerere University, Kampala. She has given guest lectures at universities across the world.
In 2010-2011, she served as legal advisor to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, assisting in the negotiations between the Government of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan on issues of state succession and working on peace negotiations for Darfur.
She has advised on transitional justice, peace negotiations and the rule of law for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York, The Hague and Sudan and for the UK Department for International Development in Darfur. She worked with an NGO in Senegal on microfinance.
She has also served as an expert in international arbitration.
She holds an LLM (cum laude, Utrecht, with a specialisation in Cape Town), an MPhil in International Relations (Cantab) and a PhD in International Law (Cantab).
Some media interviews are available here:
http://ilareporter.org.au/2017/03/sarah-nouwen/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-international-criminal-court_...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cvlmb
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/bashir-sweeps-sudan-election-15042...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/24/israel-palestine-icc_n_6524798....
Some of the publications listed below are also available via Nouwen's SSRN Author Page.
Selected publications
Books
Race and Transitional Justice (ed) (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Making and Breaking Peace in Sudan and South Sudan: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Beyond (ed) (Oxford University Press, 2020)
The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law (ed) (Oxford University Press, 2020)
What's Wrong with International Law? Liber Amicorum A.H.A. Soons (ed) (Brill, 2015)
Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan, 2013)
Select Proceedings of the European Society of International Law, 2010, Volume 3 (with James Crawford) (eds) (Hart Publishing, 2012)
Articles
'In Defense of International Law?' 36(2) Temple International and Comparative Law Journal (2022)
'Exporting Peace: The EU mediator’s normative backpack' 1(1) European Law Open 26-59
'The Politics of Global Lawmaking: A Conversation' 32(4) European Journal of International Law 1341–1352
'The Restatement (Fourth): An Interview with One of the Two Co-Ordinating Reporters' 32(4) European Journal of International Law (2021) 1371-1374
'A Transatlantic Symposium on the Restatement (Fourth)' 32(4) European Journal of International Law (2021) 1365-1369
'International Law and Democracy Revisited: Introduction to the Symposium' [2021] the European Journal of International Law 32(1) 9-15
'The necessary indeterminacy of self-determination: Politics, law and conflict in the Horn of Africa' Nations and Nationalism 27.1 (2021): 41-60
'International Commissions of Inquiry: What Difference Do They Make? Taking an Empirical Approach' 30(3) European Journal of International Law 819-841
'Return to Sender: Let the International Court of Justice Justify or Qualify International-Criminal-Court Exceptionalism regarding Personal Immunities' 78(3) Cambridge Law Journal
'‘The Consciousness of Duty Done’? British Attitudes Towards Self-determination and the Case of the Sudan' 2019 BYIL
'Is There Something Missing in the Proposed Convention on Crimes against Humanity? A Political Question for States and a Doctrinal One for the International Law Commission' [2018] Journal of International Criminal Justice
'Broadening the Debate: Leaving Legacies Open-ended: An Invitation for an Inclusive Debate on International Criminal Justice' (2016) AJIL Unbound
'Speaking of Legacy: Toward an Ethos of Modesty at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda' (2016) 110(2) American Journal of International Law 212-232
'Monopolizing Global Justice: International Criminal Law as Challenge to Human Diversity' (2015) 13(1) Journal of International Criminal Justice 157-176
'Pursuing Global Justice through International Criminal Law: Foreword' (2015) 13(1) Journal of International Criminal Justice 73-75
''As You Set Out for Ithaka’: Practical, Epistemological, Ethical and Existential Questions About Socio-legal Empirical Research in Conflict' (2014) 27(1) Leiden Journal of International Law 227-260
'Representational Practices at the International Criminal Court: The Gap between Juridified and Abstract Victimhood' (2013) 76(3&4) Law and Contemporary Problems 235-262
'The Importance of Frames: The Diverging Conflict Analyses of the United Nations and the African Union' (2013) 107 Proceedings of the One Hundred Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law 330-335
'Legal Equality on Trial: Sovereigns and Individuals before the International Criminal Court' [2013] 43 Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2012 151-181
'Complementarity in Practice: Critical Lessons from the ICC for R2P' [2012] 21 Finnish Yearbook of International Law 2010 53-64
'Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan: A Rejoinder to Bas Schotel' (2011) 22(4) European Journal of International Law 1161-1164
'Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan' (2010) 21(4) European Journal of International Law 941-965
'The Responsibility to Protect in Practice: Efforts to Promote Human Rights in Darfur' (2007) 24(65) Merkourios Utrecht Journal of International and European Law 58-70
'Combining Ownership and Neutrality in the Prosecution of International Crimes: Theory and Reality of Mixed Tribunals' (2007) 25(2) Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 255-287
'Vier Jaar Internationaal Engagement met Darfur: Een Overzicht; Voedselpakketten en Diplomaten, Toga’s en Blauwhelmen' (2007) 61(2) Internationale Spectator 99-103
'‘Hybrid Courts’: The Hybrid Category of a New Type of International Crimes Courts' (2006) 2(2) Utrecht Law Review 190-214
'Sudan's Divided (and Divisive?) Peace Agreements' (2006) 19 Hague Yearbook of International Law 113-134
'‘Gemengde’ Tribunalen en Hooggespannen Verwachtingen' "Internationale straftribunalen", (2006) 32(4) Justitiële Verkenningen 37-55
'The Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Immunity of Taylor: The Arrest Warrant Case Continued' (2005) 18(3) Leiden Journal of International Law 645-669
Book Chapters
"Peacemaking" in E. Benvenisti and D. Kritsiotis (ed(s)), The Cambridge History of International Law, Vol 17 (1989-) ), forthcoming
"Race and Transitional Justice" (with Neha Jain) in Neha Jain and Sarah M.H. Nouwen (ed(s)), Race and Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2026), pp. 1-17
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