Dr Nicola Palmer
Nicola Palmer is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Criminology, University of Cape Town and a Reader (Associate Professor) in Criminal Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. She holds a DPhil in law from the University of Oxford and a BCom (Honours) in law and economics from Rhodes University.
Nicola’s work sits at the intersection of international law and criminology. Her current project supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship critically explores the use of criminal law in the global ordering of migration. Her first monograph 'Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda' (OUP, 2015) was awarded the King’s College London Research Project of the Year in 2015.
Nicola has written on the relationship between international criminal law and border control, resistance to mass violence, methodological approaches to transitional justice and legal pluralism with support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Foundation and the British Academy. Her work has been published in numerous international journals including Theoretical Criminology, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the American Journal of International Law and Transnational Legal Theory.
Nicola was previously the Global Justice Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford and convenor of the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) network. She received her DPhil in law from the University of Oxford in 2011 where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to this, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UN ICTR).
Nicola has engaged in advisory work for numerous organisations including the United Nations University, swisspeace, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Redress, and the Aegis Trust. She has given briefings to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the UK Metropolitan Police, SO15, and War Crimes Team and has engaged in various media appearances including on Al Jazeera, the BBC World Service, France24, and the Turkish public broadcaster TRT.
Expertise/ Research Interests
International criminal law, border criminology, refugee law, legal anthropology, and central African studies.
Teaching
PBL5815S Human Rights and Punishment
PBL5615F International Law: Theory and Practice
PBL5848F Law and Society in Africa