Featured scholars

Rebecca Barber

Rebecca Barber is a PhD candidate with the School of Law and a Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, University of Queensland. Her PhD thesis (currently under examination) focused on the legal powers of the UN General Assembly to prevent and respond to atrocity crimes. In 2021 she authored a guidance document for States on that topic. She is currently working on the development of a framework for the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect.

Rebecca’s research encompasses UN Charter law, international peace and security law, international organisations, state responsibility, international human rights and humanitarian law, and the responsibility to protect. Her research has been published in leading international law journals including the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, the International Review of the Red Cross, the Journal of International Peacekeeping, the Journal of Conflict and Security Law and the Journal on the Use of Force in International Law, among others. She also writes frequently for online international law forums including Just Security and EJIL:Talk!. Her blogs for EJIL:Talk! have for the last two years been listed as among the blog’s most widely read. 

Rebecca has received several national and international awards for her research including the International and Comparative Law Quarterly early career prize (2021), an Australian Legal Research Award (2022) and awards for HDR research excellence from the University of Queensland’s Law School (2021) and Faculty of Business, Economics and Law (2022).

Rebecca previously had a career in international humanitarian assistance and advocacy, with assignments in Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

For Rebecca’s publications see her UQ POLSIS page here.

Dr Mark Deng 

CPICL Fellow, Dr Mark Deng, is a researcher in South Sudanese public law. He was awarded a UNSW Comparative Constitutional Law Bursary to advance work on his monograph on constitutional transformations and institutional development in South Sudan. 

Read more about Mark's journey in Contact Magazine's From tree leaves to UQ Law. 

View all CPICL Members