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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).
Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk
Research
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
No results found
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
- 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
Reports/Discussion Papers
- 'A Swiss human rights budget?' EJIL: Talk! (12 April 2024)
- ‘How to Define Unjust Planetary Change’, NatureNews and Views (31 May 2023) [pdf here, no paywall]
- International Bar Association, Legal Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation(IBA, 2022) [Lead Author]
- M.R. Allen, O.P. Dube, W. Solecki, F. Aragón-Durand, W. Cramer, S. Humphreys, M. Kainuma, J. Kala, N. Mahowald, Y. Mulugetta, R. Perez, M. Wairiu, and K. Zickfeld (2018) 'Framing and Context' in Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds), Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty (World Meteorological Organization, 2018) [Lead Author]
- 'Conscience in the Datasphere', Open Democracy (March 14, 2016) [blog post]
- 'Climate change poses an existential threat to human rights', Open Global Rights (July 16, 2015)
- International Bar Association, Achieving Climate Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption (IBA, 2014). [Task Force Member and Academic Advisor]
- International Council on Human Rights Policy, Beyond Technology Transfer: Protecting Human Rights in a Climate-Constrained World(ICHRP, 2011)
- International Council on Human Rights Policy, Navigating the Dataverse: Privacy, Technology, Human Rights(ICHRP, 2011)
- International Council on Human Rights Policy, Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide(ICHRP, 2008)
- Open Society Justice Initiative, Legal Remedies for the Resource Curse(OSI, 2005)
- Open Society Institute, Monitoring EU Accession: Minority Rights(OSI, 2001)
- Open Society Institute, Racism in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond(OSI, 2000)