Catherine Savard

Catherine Savard (LL.B., LL.M., MPhil (Oxon)) is a Canadian human rights lawyer and a DPhil in Law candidate at the University of Oxford. Her thesis focuses on the concept of ecocide in international law. She is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholar, and twice a John Peters Humphrey fellow. She holds a master's degree (LL.M.) with honours from Laval University, where she wrote an award-winning thesis on genocidal intent in international law. Catherine currently serves as Deputy Chairperson of Oxford Pro Bono Publico, an Oxford-based organization providing high-quality comparative and international law research to individuals and organisations around the world working pro bono. She is also serving as a legal advisor in support of the truth and reconciliation processes in French Guiana and in Guinea.

Before joining Oxford, Catherine clerked both at the Supreme Court of Canada and the Québec Court of Appeal. She also served as a legal adviser to Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and co-wrote the Inquiry's “Legal Analysis on Genocide”. From 2017 to 2021, she coordinated a multi-million Canada-wide research project, the “Canadian Partnership for International Justice,” which brought together prominent international scholars, practitioners and NGOs, to co-create knowledge and fight against impunity for international crimes. The Partnership notably won the 2023 Governor General’s Innovation Award, which recognizes and celebrates exceptional and transformational Canadian innovations, as well as the 2022 Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council ‘Impact’ award. Catherine’s research interests include public international law, international criminal law, human rights, environmental law, gender, transitional justice, and the use of international law by domestic courts.