Sophie Ryan awarded two awards by the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law
Sophie Ryan, DPhil Law Candidate and Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, has recently been awarded two awards by the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law (ANZSIL): the Alice Edwards Breakthrough Researcher Award and the Student Paper Prize.
The Alice Edwards Breakthrough Researcher Award is primarily focused on doctoral students and early career researchers to help ‘‘encourage and foster the research of the most talented and promising doctoral students and early career researchers from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands whose research in international law is making, or is likely to make, a significant contribution to finding solutions to some of the world’s most pressing global or regional challenges’.
Sophie won one of the inaugural awards this year for her doctoral research and presented last week at the ANZSIL Annual Conference in Melbourne for her work ‘Testing the Conventional Wisdom? Framework Issues in Cross-Border Human Rights Litigation Involving States’.
The Student Paper Prize is awarded to the best paper submitted by a student on any public or private international law topic. Sophie won the prize for her paper titled ‘Fundamental Legal Conceptions and the International Law of (Civil) Jurisdiction’, which explores the juridical building blocks that constitute the international law of jurisdiction. The paper will appear in the forthcoming Volume 42 of the Australian Year Book of International Law.
The prize committee praised Sophie’s paper commenting:
“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.”
Sophie says “It’s a great honour to receive these prizes. The AYBIL has an outstanding reputation for publishing scholarship of the highest quality in public and private international law, and ANZSIL for bringing together the region’s leading thinkers and practitioners in and of international law. To have my work recognised by these organisations is immensely encouraging as I continue to progress my research. Both prizes have also provided excellent opportunities for further engagement with my work which has helped to refine my ideas and improve the thesis. I’m very grateful for these opportunities, to those who have generously made them possible, and particularly to my supervisor, Professor Andrew Dickinson, for his constant support and encouragement.”