Stephen Humphreys

Stephen Humphreys is a Professor of International Law at LSE. He is a Commissioner on the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. He was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C and Academic Advisor to the International Bar Association’s Task Force on Climate Justice and Human Rights.

 Background

Stephen was formerly Research Director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy in Geneva, and, before that, Senior Officer at the Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative in New York and Budapest. He has conducted policy work on climate change and in human rights in a variety of fora. His research interests include international legal and critical theory; rule of law; law and development; climate change; the laws of war; and transnational legal processes. He holds a PhD from Cambridge and a Master’s degree in law from SOAS. His publications include Theatre of the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and the edited volume, Human Rights and Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Research interests

Current research focuses on the distribution of risk and security under international and transnational law. The work looks at various different areas of law — international security arrangements, international criminal law, environmental law, investment and trade law, transnational developmental and financial arrangements — in order to gauge their overall impact in combination on the experience of risk. Stephen retains a special interest in climate change and human rights, in legal theory, drawing in particular on critical theory, and in rule of law promotion, the contemporary form of law and development.