Dr. Katharine Fortin

Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) within the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. Over the last years, she has studied the ways in which different legal frameworks provide protection for people living in territory under the control of armed groups. Drawing heavily on literature from conflict studies and rebel governance, her research tries to understand how international law can (and should) address the complexity of everyday life in these spaces.

Originally from London, UK, Katharine worked in legal practice at Norton Rose Fulbright, the ICC and the ICTY before entering academia. She finished her PhD (cum laude) in 2015 and her book The Accountability of Armed Groups under Human Rights Law won the 2018 Lieber prize. She is currently working on a Veni project ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Civilian Agency, Armed Groups and International Law’ and she is the founder and co-editor of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.

The answers cannot only lie in the law, but have to also be found outside the law.

Katharine Fortin has been a member of the Utrecht Young Academy, a bridge between young and talented researchers, since 2022.