General international law. My focus is on the law of State responsibility, interactions between general international law and specialized regimes, and international civil procedure. Currently, I am working on a detailed commentary on the core procedural provision (Article 43) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice for the commentary edited by Professors Christian Tams and Andreas Zimmermann (forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2019). I am also conducting research into the law of State responsibility in military space operations within the ongoing Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations project.

Law of armed conflict. My focus is on questions of conflict qualification, lethal targeting, provision of humanitarian assistance in time of armed conflict, and the overlap between the law of armed conflict and other areas of international law. My recent monograph on Internationalized Armed Conflicts in International Law (published by OUP in 2018) provides the first comprehensive analysis of factors that transform a non-international armed conflict into an international armed conflict. My further ongoing projects include the preparation of a special issue for the Journal of Conflict and Security Law with Prof. Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne on The Impact of the Law of Armed Conflict on General International Law and conducting research into the legal aspects of targeting in situations of urban warfare.

International cyber law. My focus is on questions of cyber warfare, legal aspects of attribution of cyber operations, and cyberspace governance. I am currently leading a multistakeholder ESRC-funded project on International Cyber Law in Practice in collaboration with the NATO Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency. Together with Prof. Zhixiong Huang, I am also exploring the differences and overlaps between Chinese and Western approaches to the rule of law in cyberspace, with some of our findings having recently been published in the Chinese Journal of International Law.

I welcome doctoral proposals from qualified and motivated students within any of these three broad areas. Although any application will have to go through the formal procedure at my university, please feel free to approach me informally to discuss your idea prior to submitting the formal application.