Dr Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi

Profile

Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi was a researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut (2019-2021). She currently is a Lecturer in International Law and Security at the University of Manchester and the Public International Law / International Law & Security LLMs/MA Programme Director. She is the Managing Editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law and a Research Fellow at the International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT). Since 2020, Rebecca is a Member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War.

Her work reflects on counterterrorism and, more precisely, on our evolving legal and policy capacity to deal with security threats, where new forms of non-state transnational risk, counter-risk strategy and technology are in play. Her research interests and expertise are in public international law, international humanitarian law, human rights law and (international and European) criminal law, which altogether allow to explore counterterrorism policies in a comprehensive manner.

Rebecca holds a PhD from the European University Institute and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Her dissertation, entitled “Drone Programs: the Interaction Between Technology, War and the Law”, concerned the extraterritorial use of armed drones against transnational terrorist networks, and the profound pressure placed on current legal concepts in the jus ad bellum, jus in bello and human rights law, through this practice and its justifications. In the context of her dissertation, Rebecca spent one semester at Columbia Law School as Visiting Scholar of the Human Rights Institute. Moreover, Rebecca has been a Project Collaborator with the ERC Advanced Grant-funded project, “The Individualization of War”. Prior to entering the European University Institute, she was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM), the French Ministry of Defense’s research center, which awarded her a Research Excellence Prize. She holds LLM degrees from the European University Institute (in Comparative European and International Laws) and the University of Nanterre (in Human Rights Law). She holds a Master of Laws degree in Criminal Law and a degree in International Criminal Law from the University of Nanterre (Summa Cum Laude).

Rebecca has taught courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in Comparative Constitutional Law and International Humanitarian Law at Sciences Po Paris (Euro-American Program, Reims Campus), and in International Human Rights Law, Criminal Law and Constitutional Law at the University of Nanterre (Paris 10). She has supervised master theses at the University of Amsterdam in the Public International Law and the Criminal Law LLMs.