I am the John G. Winant Associate Professor of U.S. Foreign Policy at the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) of the University of Oxford. I am also a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC).
My research concerns international law and ethics in international relations, specifically in war. I investigate how legal and moral imperatives interact with strategic thinking and technological developments to explain conduct in war and the development of armed conflict. Several of my current projects investigate the role of legal and moral principles in informing mass attitudes towards war. I also work on IR theory, specifically constructivism, analytical just war theory and normative jurisprudence.
My first book, Legitimate Targets? Social Construction, International Law and U.S. Bombing, appeared with Cambridge University Press as part of the series Cambridge Studies in International Relations, in 2015. The book proposes a constructivist theory of international law and highlights tensions between a legal and a moral definition of a legitimate target of attack. The book was Runner-Up for the Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship of the Society of Legal Scholars in 2016, and it has received an Honourable Mention by the Theory Section of the International Studies Association.
My second (co-authored) book, Law Applicable to Armed Conflict, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2020. It proposes a moral division of labour between human rights and humanitarian law and examines under what empirical circumstances each body of law should prevail over the other.
News
New book out: Law Applicable to Armed Conflict, Cambridge University Press, Ziv Bohrer, Janina Dill and Helen Duffy
Photo Credit: Catarina Heeckt (London School of Economics)
