During the 2018-2019 academic year, Rebecca was a Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC-funded Individualization of War (IOW) project. She was appointed as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, in the Blavatnik School of Government. In addition contributing to the ongoing work of the IOW project, Rebecca engaged in scholarship on war, international law, and the protection of war-affected populations.
Rebecca is a Canadian lawyer, with a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto and an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS. From 2014-2018 she carried out doctoral studies at the London School of Economics, with the support of scholarships from the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Rebecca’s doctoral research project examined how international humanitarian actors engage with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in their everyday practices. This project drew on original empirical material gathered through fieldwork in South Sudan and at global civil-military trainings. In 2016, Rebecca was a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow on Professor Anne Orford’s Civil War, Intervention, and International Law project at Melbourne Law School.
Previously, Rebecca was a practitioner in the field of humanitarian aid and human rights. From 2009-2011 she was based in Darfur, Sudan, as Country Director for the NGO War Child Canada. In this role she oversaw the organization’s youth-focused programming in the areas of civilian protection, education, livelihoods, and peacebuilding. As a law student, Rebecca engaged in research and advocacy on the rights of female prisoners with mental health issues. As an Arthur C. Helton Fellow, she conducted life history interviews with detainees deemed to be ‘illegal foreigners’ in South Africa.
Rebecca is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and has taught courses in criminal law, humanitarianism, and IHL at institutions such as the LSE, the University of Western Ontario, and SOAS. Rebecca’s scholarship has been published in academic journals such as the National Journal of Constitutional Law, Criminal Law Quarterly, Citizenship Studies, Refuge, and the Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology. She also writes about IHL for the general public, contributing to forums such as International Law Grrrls Blog and The Conversation. Rebecca continues to engage with frontline practitioners, facilitating trainings in international law and humanitarian ethics for NATO soldiers, UN peacekeepers, and humanitarian aid workers.
