Dr Giovanni Mantilla

I am University Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, and B.A. degrees in Political Science and Languages and Sociocultural Studies from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. I have held postdoctoral positions at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, and at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. I have also been a British Academy Newton Fellow. Prior to coming to Cambridge in 2018, I taught at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City for three years.

My research investigates the politics of international lawmaking through multinational archival research, with emphasis so far on the international law of armed conflict and human rights law. Generally, I have asked why and how international rules have emerged to regulate practices, actors, or forms of political violence that states had historically refused to bring into the purview of international law, including civil war and limits upon wartime hostilities to protect civilians. The fruits of this research have appeared in top academic journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of the History of International Law, and Global Governance. Theoretically, I am fascinated by the operation of social pressures in diplomacy and international legal processes.

My book entitled Lawmaking Under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict was published in December 2020. It explains the emergence and development of the humanitarian law of internal armed conflict drawing on the archives of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Switzerland, and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, among others. The book was recently awarded the Francis Lieber Prize (American Society of International Law) as the best book in the field of the law of armed conflict for 2021.