Liora Lazarus

Liora’s expertise sits at the interface between security, the rule of law, and human rights. She came to the Peter A. Allard School of Law in 2020 after a twenty year career at the University of Oxford. During here time at Oxford she was Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Fellow in Law at St. Anne's College, and Associate Professor in Law. She remains a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and was recognized as Professor in Human Rights Law at Oxford in October 2020.

Background

Born and raised in South Africa, she studied African Economic History at the University of Cape Town and Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She completed her DPhil in Law at Balliol College at the University of Oxford in 2001, where she was a Jowett Scholar. From 1994-95 she was a Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany.

Academic work

Liora’s first monograph, Contrasting Prisoners’ Rights (OUP) and article ‘Conceptions of Liberty Deprivation’ (Modern Law Review) shaped the field of prisoners’ rights. Subsequently, her research has focused primarily on the broader relationship between security and fundamental rights.  The results of this scholarship have been disseminated in a range of journal articles including International Legal Materials and The Federal Law Review, book chapters in edited collections such as The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights and the Max Planck Encyclopedia in Comparative Constitutional Law (OUP), and blog sites such as EJIL talk and Opinio Juris. The themes are also reflected in two collections which she co-edited: Security and Human Rights and Reasoning Rights (Hart Publishing). 

Liora is the founding and lead editor of the book series Hart Studies in Security and Justice, articles editor of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Human Rights Practice and the Max Planck Encyclopedia for Comparative Constitutional Law. She was previously the book review editor on the European Human Rights Law Review. She has attracted significant research funding (individually and jointly) over the course of her career. This includes a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations, and the Policy and Evidence Centre on Modern Slavery from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation Fund.

Expert Advisory Work

Over her career, Liora has complemented her academic work with expert legal advisory work. Most recently, Liora acted as an Independent Expert on the Council of Europe working group which produced the report ‘Respecting human rights and the rule of law when using automated technology to detect online child sexual exploitation and abuse’. Prior to this, Liora had published a number of major public reports for inter alia: the UK Ministry of Justice (2007 and 2009), the UK Stern Review on the Handling of Rape Complaints (2010), and the European Union Parliament (2011).

Alongside these reports, Liora has submitted work to a range of public inquiries including the Basque Working Group on the Treatment of Political Detainees in light of the ETA ceasefire (2014) and the UK Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill (2014). Liora has also advised on national compliance to the Lanzarote Committee of the Council of Europe and the European Commission on norms applicable in the EU area of freedom, security, and justice (AFSJ).

Liora also co-founded and led Oxford Pro Bono Publico (OPBP) with colleagues at Oxford, and has supervised the publication of thirteen OPBP reports on a range of issues connected to her academic expertise. 

Teaching and public lectures

During her time at Oxford, Liora created three new human rights courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, and also supervised forty graduate students at the Masters and Doctoral level in her field of expertise.  Many of her supervisees have gone on to become leaders in their fields both within academia and the legal profession.  At Allard, Liora teaches Transnational Law in the first year of the JD, and has developed two research seminar courses:  International Human Rights Law and Security and Human Rights. 

Liora has been invited to guest lecture, and deliver a number of public lectures, in areas related to her work. These include the Barbara Aronstein Lecture at Columbia Law School, New York; the Global and Comparative Public Law Colloquium at New York University; the Centre for African Studies, Harvard University; the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge; the Institute of British Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin; the University of New South Wales Law School, Sydney; the Basque Human Rights Congress; and the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study.

Associations

Liora is a Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an Associate of the Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry.  She held the Douglas McK Brown Visiting Chair in Law at the Peter A. Allard School, UBC in 2018. Previously she has held visiting fellowships at the Gilbert and Tobin Centre for Public law at the University of New South Wales Law School, Sydney, and a research association at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town.

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