Professor Christine Bell

Professor Bell has a first class law degree from Selwyn College, Cambridge, (1988) and an LL.M in Law from Harvard Law School (1990) where she was a Harkness Fellow. In 1990 she qualified as a Barrister at law in Northern Ireland and in 1992, as an Attorney-at-law in New York, practicing for a period at Debevoise & Plimpton, NY. From 1997-9 she was Director of the Centre for International and Comparative Human Rights Law, Queen's University of Belfast, and from 2000-2011, she was Professor of Public International Law, and a founder and Director of the Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster.  From 2015-2026 she was Principal Investigator and Director of the Political Settlement Research Programme (PSRP) and later the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), University of Edinburgh.  She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an Honorary Professor at The Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University of Belfast. 

Professor Bell has been active in non-governmental organizations, and was chairperson of Belfast-based Human Rights organization, the Committee on the Administration of Justice from 1995-7, and a member of the inaugural Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission established under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. In 1999 she was a member of the European Commission’s Committee of Experts on Fundamental Rights and has also been an International Board member of International IDEA, Conciliation Resources, and the Social Change Initiative. 

Her research interests lie in the interface between constitutional and international law, gender and conflict, and legal theory, with a particular interest in peace processes and their agreements. In 2007 Christine won the American Society of International Law's Francis Deake Prize for her article on 'Peace Agreements: Their Nature and Legal Status' 100(2), American Journal of International Law. The prize is awarded annually for the leading article by a younger author in the AJIL. She has authored two books: On the Law of Peace: Peace Agreements and the Lex Pacificatoria (Oxford University Press, 2008) which won the Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize, awarded by the Socio-legal Studies Association UK, and Peace Agreements and Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2000). In 2007 she was awarded the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship for 'established academics with an international reputation' at the European University Institute Law department, Florence, Italy. 

She is author of the best-seller PeaceTech: Digital Transformation to End Wars. Together with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh she is responsible for the creation of the PA-X Peace Agreement Database which is a unique archive, qualitative and quantitative resource of all the world’s peace agreements from 1990 to date.  In 2023 this work won the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Mary Sommerville Prize. 

Professor Bell has also taken part in multiple peace negotiations discussions, providing constitutional law and human rights law advice and support, including as a UN Senior Mediation Advisor.  She also engages in training for diplomats, mediators and lawyers and has acted as an expert in transitional justice for the UN Secretary-General, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, and UN Women.