The LSE Department of Law is pleased to be hosting a launch to celebrate the release of The New Histories of International Criminal Law: Retrials (eds. Immi Tallgren and Thomas Skouteris).
The language of international criminal law has considerable traction in global politics, and much of its legitimacy is embedded in apparently "axiomatic" historical truths. This innovative edited collection brings together some of the world's leading international lawyers with a very clear mandate in mind: to re-evaluate the dominant historiographical tradition in the field of international criminal law. Carefully curated, and with contributions by leading scholars, The New Histories of International Criminal Law pursues three research objectives: to bring to the fore the structure and function of contemporary histories of international criminal law, to take issue with the consequences of these histories, and to call for their demystification. The essays discern several registers on which the received historiographical tradition must be retried: tropology; inclusions/exclusions; gender; race; representations of the victim and the perpetrator; history and memory; ideology and master narratives; international criminal law and hegemonic theories; and more.
This book intervenes critically in the fields of international criminal law and international legal history by bringing in new voices and fresh approaches. Taken as a whole, it provides a rich account of the dilemmas, conundrums, and possibilities entailed in writing histories of international criminal law beyond, against, or in the shadow of the master narrative.
The launch will consist of a presentation by Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel, who will comment on the book, while Professor Gerry Simpson (contributor) and Dr Immi Tallgren (editor, contributor) will be present to discuss with the audience and answer questions. Unfortunately, Thomas Skouteris (editor) will not be able to join us. A drinks reception will follow.
Immi Tallgren is a Senior Research Fellow (Kone Foundation) at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. Previously Senior Lecturer of Public International Law at the University of Helsinki; Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science. She currently directs collaborative research on history of international law as well as on international law and media. Prior to returning to academia in 2011, Tallgren worked for 12 years for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Legal Unit of the European Police Cooperation Organisation, the European Space Agency Legal Department in Paris, and the European Space Agency Brussels Office for Cooperation with the EU Institutions.
Christine Schwöbel-Patel is Associate Professor at the School of Law of the University of Warwick. Prior to Warwick, Schwöbel-Patel taught at the University of Liverpool, the University of Leiden and King's College London. She was awarded the 2014 Outstanding Early Career Researcher award by the University of Liverpool. In 2013 and 2014, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. In 2013, she was part of the Junior Faculty at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) in Doha, Qatar. In 2012, she initiated a research network dedicated to Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law (CAICL).
Gerry Simpson was appointed to a Chair in Public International Law at LSE January, 2016. He previously taught at the University of Melbourne (2007-2015), the Australian National University (1995-1998) and LSE (2000-2007). He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States (Cambridge, 2004) and Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (Polity 2007), and co-editor (with Kevin Jon Heller) of Hidden Histories (Oxford, 2014) and (with Raimond Gaita) of Who’s Afraid of International Law? (Monash, 2016)
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