Sandesh Sivakumaran

Sandesh Sivakumaran is a Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, and a Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Professor Sivakumaran was previously a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham and the 2022 Lieber Scholar at the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare at the United States Military Academy, West Point. He has been a non-resident research scholar at the United States Naval War College Stockton Center for International Law and has held visiting fellowships at Melbourne Law School and New York University School of Law.

Sandesh has published on a variety of topics in public international law. He is the author of The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2012), which was awarded the International Committee of the Red Cross Paul Reuter Prize, the American Society of International Law Francis Lieber Prize, and the European Society of International Law Book Prize. He is one of the authors of Oppenheim’s International Law: United Nations (Oxford University Press, 2017, which was awarded the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit. He is the co-author of Cases and Materials on International Law (Sweet and Maxwell, 9 ed, 2020) and co-editor of International Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 4 ed, 2022). He has published in leading journals including the European Journal of International Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly and the Human Rights Quarterly. His article on the courts of armed groups was awarded the Journal of International Criminal Justice Giorgio La Pira prize and the Antonio Cassese prize. His work has been cited by, among others, the UK, Netherlands, and Israeli Supreme Courts, the International Criminal Court, the International Law Commission, and UN commissions of inquiry.

Sandesh advises and acts as an expert for a range of states, international organizations and non-governmental organizations. He is a member of the Reading Committee of the ICRC’s Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, a member of the advisory board of Geneva Call, and was a member of the Core Group of Experts for the Oxford Guidance on the Law Relating to Humanitarian Relief Operations in Situations of Armed Conflict. He has also worked at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.