Professor Janina Dill delivers the inaugural lecture for the Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government. 

Global security: Is law our last hope?

We are living through a crisis of global security, with armed conflicts multiplying and escalating. International law seems as relevant as it seems ineffective in addressing these challenges. Can international law de-escalate conflicts and protect civilians? The lecture will highlight political and doctrinal obstacles to securing the globe by means of law. And yet without the rule of law, we have no hope of global security at all. 

The lecture is followed by a drinks reception.

Janina Dill

Janina is the inaugural Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government. She is a Fellow at Trinity College and Co-Director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict (ELAC). Janina’s research concerns the role of law and morality in international relations, specifically in war. In one strand of research, she develops legal and philosophical theories about how international law can be an instrument of morality in war, albeit an imperfect one. This work speaks to debates in just war theory and international law.

The Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security

The Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security, based at the Blavatnik School, builds on the School’s expertise in international law, economics, philosophy and government, and its wide-ranging engagement with leading scholars and practitioners on issues from cyber security to reducing state fragility. Focused on critical priorities in global security such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, terrorism, ethics of warfare and international law, the Chair leads global collaborative research and build on the School’s growing outreach to current public leaders through short courses and global workshops. The Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security enables the University more powerfully to bring together research across departments to contribute to global security policy.

The lecture is open to the public and will also be live-streamed on the Blavatnik School YouTube channel.