Centre for Socio-Legal Studies Announces Annual Lecture 2025

International Law and the Social: Elements of a Conceptual and Political History

📅 5pm-6.30pm, 28th May 2025
📍 The Buttery, Wolfson College

Professor Martti Koskenniemi

The Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is delighted to announce that its annual lecture for 2025 will be delivered by Professor Martti Koskenniemi, one of the world’s most influential scholars of international law. His lecture, titled “International Law and the Social: Elements of a Conceptual and Political History”, will address key themes in the field of international law.

Professor Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki. A former Finnish diplomat (1978–1994) and member of the United Nations International Law Commission (2002–2006), he has held visiting positions at leading institutions worldwide, including New York University, Columbia University, Cambridge, LSE, and the Universities of Brussels, Melbourne, Paris, and São Paulo.

His research focuses on the history and theory of international law, particularly the relationship between sovereignty and property, and the fragmentation of international law in the 21st century. His seminal works, including From Apology to Utopia (1989/2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2001), and The Politics of International Law (2011), have profoundly shaped the field. He is currently working on a history of international legal thought from the late medieval period to the 19th century.

The annual lecture, organised in collaboration with the Law and Societies research cluster at Wolfson College, will be followed by a drinks reception, to which all attendees are warmly invited.