Sophie Ryan awarded the 2024 AYBIL/ANZSIL Student Paper Prize

Sophie Ryan, DPhil in Law Candidate at Magdalen College has received the 2024 Australian Year Book of International Law (AYBIL)/Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL) Student Paper Prize. Sophie's paper, titled ‘Fundamental Legal Conceptions and the International Law of (Civil) Jurisdiction’ explores the juridical building blocks that constitute the international law of jurisdiction.  

Special thanks have been paid to Professor Andrew Dickinson, Professor Catherine Redgwell, Professor Dapo Akande and Dr Miles Jackson for the helpful conversations that were held when planning this research.   

The AYBIL/ANZSIL Student Paper Prize is an annual prize judged this year by a Prize Committee comprising of Associate Professor Esmé Shirlow (AYBIL General Editor), Professor Andrew Byrnes (AYBIL Editorial Board Member) and Associate Professor Jessie Hohmann (ANZSIL Council Member). 
 
The prize committee reviewed Sophie’s paper and made the following comments:  
 
"This paper addresses a significant and challenging topic with an ambitious goal, setting out 'to identify, with precision, the juridical building blocks that constitute the international law of jurisdiction'. The paper deftly engages in a critical and conceptual analysis that draws on relevant literature to challenge mainstream thinking in an intellectually stimulating way. The author displayed considerable confidence in their treatment of the areas of international law that the paper encompasses and the legal theory that the paper engaged with. It is clear that the author understands and is able to explain, synthesise and analyse core issues of international law in a sophisticated manner. This makes the paper a worthy winner of the AYBIL/ANZSIL Student Paper Prize, and the Committee congratulates the author on this achievement."