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About
Stephen Humphreys is a Professor of International Law. 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. He 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
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. I retain 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.
Publications
Teaching
Engagement and impact
External Activities
- Commissioner on the IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law
- General Editor (Editor-in-Chief) as well as a founder of the London Review of International Law
- Lead Editor of the Cambridge LSE International Studies Book Series
- Lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- Member of the International Bar Association’s Task Force on Climate Justice and Human Rights
- Regularly consulted by international organisations (these have included the Asian Development Bank, the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, the World Bank), and by NGOs, notably on the relationship between climate change and human rights
- Editor, the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment