Leading scholar of international law and human rights appointed Head of Research at Bonavero Institute of Human Rights
The Bonavero Institute of Human Rights is pleased to announce that Professor Başak Çalı has been appointed its new Head of Research and professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. Professor Çalı is currently professor of International Law, and director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School in Berlin.
“We are delighted to welcome an academic with Professor Çalı’s global reputation and standing as the next head of research at the Bonavero Institute. She will greatly strengthen the Institute’s research capabilities in human rights law”, said Professor Kate O’Regan, the Director of the Bonavero Institute.
Professor Çalı is a leading scholar of international law and human rights. Her scholarship on international human rights law spans the European human rights system, human rights systems in the Americas and Africa, the United Nations’ human rights system, and the newly emerging human rights systems in Asia. She has a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary studies of international human rights law and human rights research methods. She has pioneered the study of bad faith violations of human rights law (Wisconsin International Law Journal 2018), and is the author of, inter alia, The Authority of International Law: Obedience, Respect and Rebuttal (OUP 2015), editor of International Law for International Relations (OUP 2010) and co-editor of Migration and the European Convention on Human Rights (OUP 2021) and Secondary Rules of Primary Importance: Attribution, Causality, Evidence, and Standards of Review in the Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (OUP 2022).
She is currently the Principal Investigator of the German Science Council funded Research Project ‘Deep Impact through Soft Jurisprudence? The Contribution of United Nations Treaty Body Case Law to the Development of International Human Rights Law’ and a co-investigator of the Volkswagen Foundation funded research project FRAMES: Framing Reality and Normativity in European Human Rights Law: Climate Change, Migration, and Authoritarianism.
As a legal practitioner, she has taken cases to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. She is the chair and co-founder of the European Implementation Network -- Europe’s leading civil society organisation that advocates for the full and effective implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. She brings over twenty years of experience in training judges, lawyers, prosecutors and police officers in human rights law across the Council of Europe. She is also Permanent Visiting Professor at the iCourts Center of Excellence for International Courts at the University of Copenhagen and a fellow of the University of Essex Human Rights Centre.
Professor Çalı said: ‘This is a time when the need for new thinking and research about human rights is greater than ever – and the Bonavero Institute is very well placed to advance that project. I am looking forward to contributing to and helping strengthen the Institute’s research environment and working with its outstanding research community’.
Professor Çalı will join the Bonavero part-time in January 2024 and full-time in October 2024.