Our People

Dino Kritsiotis

Dino Kritsiotis is Co-Director of NILSC and a Professor of Public International Law in the University of Nottingham, where he chairs the Programme on International Humanitarian Law of the Nottingham International Law and Security Centre. Professor Kritsiotis specialises in international humanitarian law, the use of force as well as the history and theory of public international law.

He is the co-editor, most recently, of Conceptual and Contextual Perspectives on the Modern Law of Treaties (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and presented his lecture on "intervention by consent" at the Fourth Trialogue of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany, in November 2018.

Victor Kattan

Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law where he is the LLM Specialism Convenor in International Law and Public International Law and convenor of two LLM courses: Principles of Public International Law and International Humanitarian Law.  

Victor’s research interests include the history of international law, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), international dispute resolution, and all areas relating to the use of force in international law. His scholarly work has addressed issues relating to Palestinian statehood, borders, settlements, armed conflict, the period of the British mandate (1922-1948), and the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as custodian of the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem.

Victor was previously awarded consecutive postdoctoral awards and fellowships at the National University of Singapore (2013-2020). He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Asian Journal of International Law and is Area Editor for the Middle East and Islam for Oxford Bibliographies of International Law. Victor has lectured extensively overseas and taken part in workshops organized by the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. He has acted as a consultant for the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Oxford Research Group, and several governments. In 2015, Victor was a guest lecturer at a summer school on International Humanitarian Law at the School of Law, Korea University, Seoul, which provided training for military and police officers from East Asia and Southeast Asia that was organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Victor’s scholarly publications include Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law (with Brian Cuddy, Michigan University Press, 2023). Violent Radical Movements in the Arab World: The Ideology and Politics of Non-State Actors (with Peter Sluglett, Bloomsbury, 2019); From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (Pluto Press 2009); and The Palestine Question in International Law (British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008).

Edward Goodwin

Edward Goodwin is Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford (BA (Hons)) and the University of Nottingham (LLM, PhD), and held a visiting position as a Grotius Research Scholar at the School of Law, University of Michigan, in 2015. His research interests include international environmental law, the law of the sea, and international heritage law.

He has published in a number of journals and edited collections in these fields, including the Journal of Environmental Law, the Colorado Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, and The Oxford Handbook on the Law of the Sea (OUP, 2015). He was also co-editor of (with Michael Bowman and Peter Davies), and a contributor to, the Research Handbook on Biodiversity and Law (Edward Elgar, 2016), and is the author of International Environmental Law and the Conservation of Coral Reefs (Routledge, 2011).

Natalie Hodgson

Dr Natalie Hodgson is an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Nottingham. Natalie's research interests include state responses to irregular migration and the legality of border policing measures under international law. Her doctoral thesis, ‘Offshore Processing Torture: State Crime, Resistance and International Criminal Law’ examined the legality of Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers under international criminal law. More generally, Natalie is interested in state crime and how harmful state practices can be challenged and resisted through international law.

Scarlett McArdle

Dr. Scarlett McArdle is an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Nottingham. Before this she held posts at the University of Lincoln and Birmingham City University. Her research specialisms focus on the law of International Responsibility, International Organisations, non-state actors at the global level, and EU External Relations. Scarlett has published widely in this area of accountability and responsibility, for example in relation to non-state humanitarian actors, the EU, and the WHO. More recently she has explored the role and status of non-state actors and questions of inter-institutional relationships in international law.

Hemi Mistry

Dr Hemi Mistry is an Associate Professor in the School of Law. Her research interests lie in the realm of the theory and practice of international adjudication, with a specific focus on international criminal justice institutions and the International Court of Justice. She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary approaches to the understanding of the role and function of international courts and tribunals in the international order, and her current research looks at how international judicial authority is constituted through language and ritual.

More broadly, Hemi's research focuses upon how aspects of judicial procedure and practice in international courts and tribunals affects the manner in which these institutions deliver upon their mandates. She is currently working on her monograph ‘Rebellious Jurisprudence: Judicial Dissent and International Law’, which is under contract with Hart.

Aoife Nolan

Aoife Nolan has been Professor of International Human Rights Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law since 2012. She was elected to the Council of Europe's European Committee of Social Rights, Europe’s leading economic and social rights monitoring mechanism, in November 2017. In 2018, she served on the Scottish First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership. She has published extensively in the areas of human rights and constitutional law, particularly in relation to economic and social rights, children's rights and non-state actors. She was the founding coordinator of the Economic and Social Rights Academic Network, UK and Ireland (ESRAN-UKI).

Professor Nolan has acted as an expert advisor to a wide range of international and national organisations and bodies working on human rights issues, including UN Special Procedures, UN treaty-monitoring bodies, the Council of Europe, multiple NHRIs and NGOs. Her books include Children’s Socio-economic Rights, Democracy and the Courts (Hart, 2011), Applying an International Human Rights Framework to State Budget Allocations: Rights and Resources (Routledge, 2014) (with O’Connell, Harvey, Dutschke and Rooney), Economic and Social Rights after the Global Financial Crisis (CUP, 2014) and The United Nations Special Procedures System (co-edited with Freedman and Murphy). She has held visiting positions at numerous academic institutions in Europe, Africa, the US and Australia. She is an Academic Expert member at Doughty Street Chambers.

Marianthi Pappa

Dr Marianthi Pappa possesses a diverse background in legal practice and academic research. She holds an LLB from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, as well as an LLM in Oil and Gas Law and a PhD, both from the University of Aberdeen. Marianthi specialises in international law of the sea, energy and investment law, and space law. She is particularly interested in the place of private actors in the international plane, and the interplay between different areas of law.

Before joining academia, she practiced law in Greece and Cyprus. She also delivers workshops to governmental and business organisations on boundary disputes and energy law.

 Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg

Dr Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg is an Assistant Professor in the School of Law, specialising in international law and international dispute settlement. Her research explores transformations of international law with respect to collective non-state entities; international legal regulation of global coordination problems; and international law in domestic courts.

She is also a dual-qualified attorney-at-law and has advised States and private parties on a wide range of public international law and international dispute settlement matters. She served as a law clerk to Judge Sir Christopher Greenwood at the International Court of Justice and practiced public international law for several years with leading global law firms in the City of London, United Kingdom, and Prague, Czech Republic.

Nigel D. White

Professor Nigel D. White is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham, formerly Professor of International Law at the University of Sheffield. He is sole author of The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security (Manchester University Press, 1990); Keeping the Peace (Manchester University Press, 2nd edn 1997), The UN System: Toward International Justice (Lynne Rienner, 2002), The Law of International Organisations (Manchester University Press, 3rd edn 2017), Democracy Goes to War: British Military Deployments under International Law (Oxford University Press 2009) and The Cuban Embargo Under International Law: El Bloqueo (Routledge, 2015), and has been co-author and co-editor of a number of other books in the area of international security law. He has published over 75 essays and articles in the area.

He has been a visiting Professor at the the Universities of Utrecht and Uppsala, as well as the Austalian National University, and has worked on projects funded by Nuffield, the EU, the UKFCO, World Justice Project, ABA and the NWO. He was a member of the REF 2014 Law Panel. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Conflict and Security Law (Oxford University Press) since its foundation in 1995.

Matthew Windsor

Dr Matthew Windsor is Associate Professor in Public International Law and Co-Director of Postgraduate Teaching at the University of Nottingham School of Law. He co-convenes the NILSC International Legal Theory discussion group.

 Matthew is a graduate of the University of Auckland (BA/LLB(Hons)), Columbia University (LLM), and the University of Cambridge (PhD). Prior to joining the University of Nottingham, Matthew was a Junior Research Fellow in International Law at the University of Oxford, and a Lecturer in International Law at the University of Reading. Prior to his academic career, Matthew was a litigation associate at the Open Society Justice Initiative in New York City, where he undertook human rights litigation and advocacy before the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee, and a judge’s clerk at the Court of Appeal of New Zealand.

 Matthew’s research interests are in the fields of public international law, international trade and investment law, law and political economy, and law and the humanities. He has published in a variety of leading journals, including the Leiden Journal of International Law and the British Yearbook of International Law, and co-edited Interpretation in International Law (OUP 2015). He is currently writing a monograph titled Advising States: Government Lawyering in International Law.

Timothy Masiko

Timothy Masiko is an assistant professor in law at the University of Nottingham. His primary area of research is in international economic law, with a focus on telling the story of Africa’s role in the development of international law. He teaches World Trading Systems on our postgraduate programs, and International Law and the Global Economy on the undergraduate programs.

Tim also teaches foundations of tort and land law. He supervises PhD students researching the implementation of African regional trade agreements, as well as multilateral approaches to international investment law. He is also the primary investigator on the AHRC-funded project, Harnessing UK Trade and Investment to Address Indo-Pacific Modern Slavery Risks.

Tim’s book – Flexible Regional Economic Integration in Africa: Lessons and Implications for the Multilateral Trading System (Bloomsbury Hart, 2022) – was based on his PhD thesis, which won the 2020 SIEL-Hart Prize in International Economic Law.

Magdalena Zabrocka

Magdalena Zabrocka is a teaching associate at the School of Law, University of Nottingham and a  doctoral researcher at the School of Law, University of Aberdeen while she has also taught at the University of Aberdeen, the University of Essex Online & KOL, and acted as an Affiliated Lecturer at the Brunel Law School. Magdalena is a Visiting Lecturer at the School of International and Advanced Problems of Public Law, Faculty of Law & Administration, University of Gdańsk, Poland. Additionally, she has practical experience in the legal sector as well as varied Pro-Bono background.

Magdalena's core research focus concerns citizenship by investment ('CBI') schemes in the EU. Having completed her English law degree and the LLM in public international law & international relations with a focus on international human rights as well as socio-legal studies in Aberdeen, Magdalena's broader areas of expertise include European Union ('EU') law and international human rights while she has also worked extensively within the field of UK public law. Magdalena's recent research relates to strategic lawsuits against public participation ('SLAPPs') and continues after her co-authorship of a study commissioned by the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs ('JURI') on 'The Use of SLAPPs to Silence Journalists, NGOs and Civil Society' (Study, PE 694.782, European Parliament, Committee on Legal Affairs, June 2021). Magdalena is a member of the Anti-SLAPP Research Hub which she recently represented as a delegate during an expert seminar on legal and economic threats to the safety of journalists organised by the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights ('OHCHR') (April 2023).

Magdalena acts as the PGR (Postgraduate) Associate Director of the Aberdeen Centre for Constitutional and Public International Law ('ACCPIL'). She is a member of the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC), the International Law and Security Centre (ILSC) in Nottingham, several ECPR Standing Groups, as well as the Society of Legal Scholars, among other professional memberships. 

Christy Shucksmith-Wesley

Dr Christy Shucksmith-Wesley is Co-Director of NILSC and is a socio-legal researcher with expertise in the provision of humanitarian assistance and protection during and after conflicts and disasters. Christy’s monograph ‘The International Committee of the Red Cross and its Mandate to Protect and Assist: Law and Practice’ (Hart, 2017) led to a number of research projects focussing on the role of the Red Cross in the provision of health care. Christy is a member of several established networks, including the Emergency Planning Society, and is currently developing a Disaster Law Network.

Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall is an ESRC 1+3 doctoral candidate in the School of Law, University of Nottingham. Rebecca’s research, under the supervision of Dr Christy Shucksmith-Wesley and Professor Nigel White, explores the legality of remote and autonomous weaponry under International Humanitarian Law.

Outside of her thesis research, Rebecca also researches in several other areas having recently assisted on research projects in the fields of disaster law and military justice. Rebecca was appointed as a research assistant on an ESRC Impact Accelerator Award in 2021 for a project entitled 'Global Health Emergencies: Lessons for Readiness'. She is also a student assistant on the Journal of Conflict and Security Law and has made her first publication of a book review in the spring edition of the journal in February 2022.

Rebecca holds a first class LLB Law from the University of Lincoln, a LLM in International Law and Global Justice from the University of Sheffield and an MA in Social Science Research (Socio-Legal Studies) from the University of Nottingham.

Emilia Nkemkanma Oris-Onyiri 

Emilia Nkemkanma Oris-Onyiri is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham's School of Law where she specialises in International Trade and Economic Law. Emilia holds a Bachelor of Laws degree (First Class) and a Master of Laws in Financial and Commercial Law both from the University of Central Lancashire.  Emilia is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria where she practiced advocacy in civil, financial and commercial law disputes before commencing her doctoral research. She is a Member of the Nigerian Bar Association and a Member of the Nigerian Institute of Chartered Arbitrators.

Emilia is conducting her research on navigating the barriers to trade liberalization and integration in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Her research seeks to identify and analyse how the trade barriers in ECOWAS can be eliminated to ease the free movement of goods within the Community.