(FL15010061)
Current Organisation
Administering Organisation
Primary research field
Strategic Research Priority area
The University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne
International Law
Securing Australia’s place in a changing world
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The University of Melbourne
Fellowship project summary:
Civil war, intervention and international law
This fellowship project aims to answer the question of whether, and if so when, it is lawful for external actors to intervene in support of parties to a civil war. The urgency of this question and the difficulty of finding general principles to address it are illustrated by the intensity of debates about the legality of
American intervention in Iraq and Syria and of Russian intervention in Ukraine. This project expects to build an interdisciplinary team to develop new legal concepts to make sense of the responsibilities of external actors in civil war, taking into account new norms and practices developed to protect civilians and to fight terrorism. It aims to provide governments, parliaments, and the public, with a framework for understanding the legal issues involved in decisions about intervention.
About Professor Orford
Professor Orford was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in 2011 and is the holder of the Michael D
Kirby Chair of International Law at The University of Melbourne where she previously held an ARC
Professorial Fellowship. Her books include International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect
(2011), Reading Humanitarian Intervention (2003) and, as co-editor, The Oxford Handbook of the
Theory of International Law (forthcoming January 2016).
Professor Orford is the immediate past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of
International Law (2013–15), and was the founding Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School (2005–12). She has held distinguished visiting positions at leading universities worldwide, including the Hedda Andersson Visiting Research Chair at Lund
University, Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Visiting Professor at Sorbonne Law School, and Senior Emile Noël Research Fellow at New York University.
Professor Orford has been awarded honorary doctorates in law by Lund University and the University of Gothenburg, and the Woodward Medal for Excellence in Humanities and Social Sciences by The
University of Melbourne.
Find out more about Professor Orford and her research by visiting her profile page on The University of Melbourne website .
For further information about this funding scheme please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme page on the ARC website .