Contributor

Payam Akhavan

Professor of International Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Payam Akhavan is Professor of International Law at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford University. He was previously Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, SciencesPo in Paris, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and at Yale Law School. He earned his Doctorate in International Law at Harvard Law School and among his numerous publications, "Beyond Impunity" in the American Journal of International Law (2001) was selected by the International Library of Law and Legal Theory as one of “the most significant published journal essays in contemporary legal studies.”

Payam Akhavan was the first Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at The Hague, and served with the UN in Bosnia, Croatia, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Guatemala, and Rwanda. He has served as counsel and advocate in leadings cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States. He is also co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre and served as Prosecutor of the Iran People's Tribunal.

His work has been featured in BBC HARDtalk, the New York Times, Maclean's magazine, and CBC Radio's Ideas program.