Profile
Janne NIJMAN Profile

Janne NIJMAN

PROFESSOR, INTERNATIONAL LAW
faculty associate of the Global Governance Centre
Spoken languages
English, Dutch, French
Areas of expertise
  • History of international legal thought
  • International law and ethics
  • Cities in International Law and Governance
  • International Legal Theory
  • Human Rights (and Business)

Profile

 

PhD, Leiden University

Dr Janne E. Nijman is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute since January 2020. She is also Professor of History and Theory of International Law of the University of Amsterdam (on leave) and affiliated with the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). She is the former chairperson of the executive board and academic director of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague. Nijman’s main research interest concern the history and theory of international law, questions of subjectivity in international law more generally, and the role of cities in international law and global governance. On the latter topic, she published the Research Handbook on International Law and Cities (2021) co-edited with Helmut Aust (FU Berlin), which has been awarded the ESIL Collaborative book prize 2022. Together they are also co-chairing the ILA Study Group on the role of cities in international law. Nijman is an advisory editor of the London Review of International Law.

Nijman is a Senior Fellow visiting the Research Group ‘The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?’ at Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam in 2023. During Michaelmas Term 2022, Janne was a visiting fellow at both Lauterpacht Center for International Law and Jesus College in Cambridge, UK.

Janne Nijman is a member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), an independent body which advises the Dutch government and parliament on foreign policy, and chair of its permanent Committee on Human Rights (2023-2026). She is a member of the supervisory board of VU University in Amsterdam and chair of the supervisory board of World Press Photo.

Janne Nijman studied law at the University of Leiden (Meester in de Rechten, 1996) and the Université Robert Schuman in Strasbourg. She defended her doctoral thesis in public international law at Leiden University in 2004. Previously, Nijman has been a post-doc researcher in the ACIL-based NWO Pioneer Project "The Divide and Interaction between National law and International Law" (2004-2005). Subsequently she worked as assistant and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam until she took up the chair of history and theory of international law in 2015. From 2007-2014, she has been Dean to the Law Faculty's PhD Candidates. Janne has been a Global Research Fellow of New York University School of Law (2003-04), affiliated to the IILJ’s History and Theory of International Law Program, an Early Career Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary College School of Law in London (summer 2006), and a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Institute for Policy Research (Spring term 2012). She was a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in 2017-2018.

Selected publications:

Books:

  • Urban Politics of Human Rights (Routledge, Series ‘Cities and Global Governance’, 2023), together with Oomen, Durmus, Miellet, Roodenburg (Eds).
  • Research Handbook on International Law and Cities, together with Helmut Aust (Eds), (Elgar, 2021)
  • Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius, together with R. Lesaffer (Eds), (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
  • Populism and International Law, together with Wouter Werner (Eds.), vol. 2018 of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, (T.M.C. Asser Press/Springer, 2019).
  • Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: Chinese and European origins of a rule of law as justice for world order, edited together with Anthony Carty (Oxford University Press, 2018).
  • Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2012,  Legal Equality and the International Rule of Law. Essays in honour of Pieter H. Kooijmans, Volume editor with Wouter Werner, 2013.
  • Janne E Nijman & André Nollkaemper (Eds), New Perspectives on the Divide between National and International Law, OUP, 2007.
  • The Concept of International Legal Personality: an inquiry into the history and theory of international law , T.M.C. Asser Press, 2004.

Chapters and articles :

  • ‘Bertha von Suttner: Locating International Law in Novel and Salon’ in: Immi Tallgren (Ed), Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces (OUP, forthcoming in 2023) 20 pp.
  • ‘Intelligence without a Conscience? A Plea for Regulation of the Digital World’, Foreword to: Andrew Murray’s ‘Almost Human: Law and Human Agency in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’, Sixth Annual T.M.C. Asser Lecture (The Hague; Asser Press, 2021) v-x.
  • ‘The Emerging Roles of Cities in International Law - Introductory Remarks on Practice, Scholarship and the Handbook’, together with Helmut P Aust, in: Aust, H.P. & Nijman, J.E. (eds.), Research Handbook on International Law and Cities (Elgar, 2021) 1-15.
  • ‘Introduction’, together with Randall Lesaffer, in: Randall Lesaffer and Janne E. Nijman (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Grotius (CUP, 2021) 1-14.
  • Ius Gentium et Naturae: The Human Conscience and Early Modern International Law’, in: Slotte, P. & Haskell, J. (eds.), Christianity and International Law: An Introduction (‘Law and Christianity’ Series), (CUP, 2021) 153-176.
  • ‘Planetary Boundaries Intra Muros: Cities and the Anthropocene’ in: French, D. & Kotzé, L.J. (eds.), Research Handbook on Law, Governance and Planetary Boundaries (Elgar, 2021) 103-123, together with Helmut P Aust.
  • ‘An Enlarged Sense of Possibility for International Law. Seeking Change by Doing History’, in: Ingo Venzke & Kevin Jon Heller (Eds), Contingency in the Course of International Law: How International Law Could Have Been (OUP, 2021) 92-107.
  • ‘Marked Absences: Locating Gender and Race in International Legal History’, 31(3) European Journal of International Law (2020): 1025–1050.
  • ‘International Law and the Social Question: An Alternative Hague Tradition?’ Foreword to: A. Orford’s International Law and the Social Question. Fifth Annual T.M.C. Asser Lecture (The Hague; Asser Press, 2020) v-xiv.
  • 'The Urban Pushback: International Law as an Instrument of Cities', contribution to the panel 'Federalism strikes back: Is the one-voice doctrine  in decline?', 2019 ASIL Proceedings of the 113th Annual Meeting, CUP 2020, 119-123.
  • Grotius’ ‘Rule of Law’ and the Human Sense of Justice: An Afterword to Martti Koskenniemi’s Foreword', 30(4) European Journal of International Law, 2019, pp 1105–1114.
  • 'Opening remarks and Questions' , Closing Plenary: International law as an Instrument for Development, 2019 ASIL Proceedings of the 113th Annual Meeting, CUP 2020, 390-392.
  • 'Foreword' to Martti Koskenniemi's T.M.C. Asser Lecture 'International Law and the Far Right. Reflections on Law and Cynicism' 2018, in the Annual Asser Lecture Series ed. by J.E. Nijman, Asser Press 2019, v-x.
  • 'Populism and International Law: what backlash and which Rubicon?', together with Wouter Werner, in JE Nijman & W Werner (Volume Eds.), Populism and International Law, Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2018, Asser Press – Springer (2019).
  • 'Personality', in J d’Aspremont & S Singh (Eds), Concepts for International Law ‐ Contributions to Disciplinary Thought (London, E Elgar, 2019) with Catherine Brölmann.
  • Seeking Change by Doing History (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 25 pp.
  • 'The Moral Responsibility of Rulers: Going back beyond the liberal rule of law for world order', together with Anthony Carty, in Anthony Carty and Janne Nijman (Eds.), Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: Chinese and European Early Modern Origins of a rule of law as justice for world order (OUP, 2018).
  • 'A Universal Rule of Law for a Pluralist World Order: Leibniz's Universal Jurisprudence and His Praise of the Chinese Ruler' in Anthony Carty and Janne Nijman (Eds.), Morality and Responsibility of Rulers: Chinese and European Early Modern Origins of a rule of law as justice for world order (OUP, 2018).
  • 'Grotius’ Imago Dei Anthropology: Grounding Ius Naturae et Gentium', in International law and Religion, edited by Martti Koskenniemi, Monica García-Salmones, and Paolo Amoroso (OUP, 2017).
  • 'Renaissance of the City as Global Actor. The role of foreign policy and international law practices in the construction of cities as global actors', in The Transformation of Foreign Policy: Drawing and Managing Boundaries, ed. by Andreas Fahrmeir, Gunther Hellmann, and Miloš Vec (OUP, 2016) pp. 209-241.
  • 'Images of Grotius, or the International Rule of Law beyond Historiographical Oscillation', 17 (1)  Journal of the History of International Law 2015, pp. 83-137.

ACTIVITIES

International Gender Champion – an international network on gender equality;
Member of the Board of Trustees of PAX for Peace
Member of the Jury of the United Cities and Local Governments’ UCLG Peace Prize
Member of the editorial board of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law;
Member of the (editorial) board of the Grotiana journal and Foundation.
Member of the board of the KNVIR, the Dutch branch of the International Law Association. 

Interview

The Institute Welcomes Janne Nijman, Professor of International Law

Professor Janne E. Nijman joined the Institute’s Department of International Law in January 2020. She is also the academic director of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague and Professor of History and Theory of International Law at the University o
Janne NIJMAN

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