Edinburgh Law School to host two Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships on international law

Drs Rebecca Sutton and Marcos Zunino have each been awarded Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships for three-year projects on international law at Edinburgh Law School. The prestigious fellowships are intended to assist those at a relatively early stage of their academic career to undertake a significant piece of publishable work.

In the project, “Frontline land: the everyday life of international humanitarian law,” Dr Sutton will investigate the often overlooked factors of the emotional life and perceptual judgments of those who are expected to enact law in a time of war. As the prospect of human-less warfare becomes more realistic, there is an urgent need to grapple with the human element that is slipping away and provide international humanitarian law with a theory of emotion that is missing. Her project will develop the concept of “Frontline Land,” a space of encounter in which different conflict zone actors navigate the interplay of law and emotions on a daily basis.

Dr Zunino’s project, “Subaltern international criminal law during the Cold War and its Influence today” will explore the 40-year gap in the history of international criminal law between 1946 and 1993. The prevalent narrative during this time depicts a Cold War stalemate that blocked the creation of international criminal tribunals; however, subaltern actors, such as activists, national liberation movements and peripheral states, were busy using the international criminal law developed after World War II in innovative and controversial ways. His project aims to trace a different trajectory of international criminal law from Nuremberg to present day.

View the full list of 2019 Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships.