We are pleased to welcome one of the world's leading theorists and historians of international law and human rights at Lund University, Professor Martti Koskenniemi! Koskenniemi is Emeritus Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki.

About the guest lecture: Using the classical distinction between 'normal science' and 'critical science', Koskenniemi will sketch a series of efforts to renew the study and engagement with international law and human rights. Special focus will be given to the recent efforts to use history in order to bring critical insights into those fields. 

Martti Koskenniemi has held visiting professorships at Melbourne Law School, the London School of Economics and Political Science, New York University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Utrecht, Columbia University as well as The universities of Paris I, II, X and XVI. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service from 1978 to 1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) from 2002 to 2006. 

His main publications include From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989), The Genetic Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2001), The Politics of International Law (2011), The Cambridge Companion to International Law (2012, co-edited with Professor James Crawford), and To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300-1870 (2021).

 

The lecture is organized by Lund University's Human Rights Profile Area, Division of Human Rights Studies and The Faculty of Law.