Dr Kirsten Ainley is Principal Investigator of the Justice, Conflict and Development network. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Director of the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics. Her research is in the field of global ethics and is concerned very broadly with relationships between politics, law and ethics in international relations. She focuses on the history and development of international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian intervention and has published on international criminal law, transitional justice, the International Criminal Court, the Responsibility to Protect and the notion of evil in international relations in journals such as The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Ethics and International Affairs, International Affairs and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. She is the co-author, with Chris Brown, of Understanding International Relations (2009) and co-editor (with Rebekka Friedman and Chris Mahony) of Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone (2015). She is also Principal Investigator on the Hybrid Justice project, which was established to evaluate the impacts of hybrid criminal courts, tribunals and investigatory mechanisms on conflict-affected states and societies. She is co-investigator on the ESRC Strategic Network on Gender Violence across War and Peace.

Ainley has a PhD and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Selected Publications:

• Evaluating the Evaluators: Transitional Justice and the Contest of Values. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2017, 11 (3): 421-442.
• From Atrocity Crimes to Human Rights: Expanding the Focus of the Responsibility to Protect. Global Responsibility to Protect, 2017, 9 (3): 243-266.
• Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone, Palgrave, 2015, co-edited with Rebekka Friedman and Chris Mahony.
• The Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: Counteracting the Crisis. International Affairs, 2015, 91 (1): 37-54.
• Excesses of Responsibility: the Limits of Law and the Possibilities of Politics, Ethics & International Affairs, 2011, 25 (4): 407-431.
• The International Criminal Court on Trial. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2011, 24 (3): 309-333.