PhD Thesis

Title: Architects of the Better World': The Birth of the International Conference Complex (1918-1998)

PhD Supervisors: Andrea Bianchi, Carolyn Biltoft, & Samuel Moyn (Yale University)

Expected completion date: 2024

Even before the United States, President Truman urged the attendants of the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization to see themselves as “architects of the better world,” the field of global governance has proven to be a fertile ground for metaphors drawn from architecture. Indeed, in the collective imagination of practitioners and scholars alike, the international legal order appears as a vast and towering edifice: a veritable “legal architecture” of globality that overlooks “areas” of governance sustained by figurative and normative “pillars.” But international law’s castles, of course, were not built solely in the air. For the metaphorical use of architectonical language only hides international law’s profound lack of engagement with the material and concrete spaces in which the “international” is produced, contested, and disputed. Conversely, in this dissertation, I argue that the “architecture of international cooperation” is a relevant question for international legal history. Instead of taking purpose-built environments for granted, I trace a genealogy of the emergence of the international conference complex as a spatial technology of global governance (1918-1998). Historicizing space and spatializing history, I suggest, might enable us to understand the role of architectonical infrastructures in the creation of socio-technical imaginaries of global governance.

Profile

Daniel Ricardo Quiroga-Villamarín holds a Law degree (with a minor in Public Affairs) from the Universidad de los Andes —Uniandes (Bogotá, Colombia) and a MA in International Law from the Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développement —IHEID (Geneva, Switzerland), where he was awarded the Fondation Hans Wilsdorf scholarship and the 2020 Mariano Garcia Rubio Prize for best MA Mémoire (2018-2020). He is pursuing his doctoral degree in International Law (with a minor in International History & Politics) at this same institution (2020-2024), with the financial support of a three-year Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Doc.CH fellowship. He has worked as an adjunct lecturer in 19th century European History at Sciences Po Nancy, as a Teaching Assistant at Uniandes & IHEID, and as a Research Assistant at the United Nations’ International Law Commission.

He is currently an Exchange Scholar at Yale University's Department of History (Fall 2022) and has been a visiting researcher at the Contextual Research in Law (CORE) group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Spring 2022) and at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) (Winter 2019-2020). His research focuses on the intersection of critical social theory, global history, and international & transnational law, with a special concern for the theory and history of global governance. His work has been published in the Anuario de Derecho Constitucional Latinoamericano (“Yearbook of Latin American Constitutional Law”), the Journal of the History of International Law, the London Review of International Law, International Politics Reviews, the Leiden Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, and Global Histories, among others.

Research Interests

• Critical Theory

• Global History

• International Law

• Theory and History of Global Governance

Relevant Publications and Works

• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (forthcoming in 2023) ““Suitable Palaces”: Navigating Layers of World Ordering at the Centre William Rappard (1923-2013).” Architectural Theory Review, first view online (Special issue on the ‘Architecture of Global Governance’). https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2231574 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2023) “Radio Silences: the ´Kidnapped Voices’ and the Production of Political Memory in Colombia (1994-2018).” Israel Law Review, first view online (Special issue on ‘Materiality and Transitional Justice’). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021223723000080 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2022) “Standardisation instead of litigation: what can human rights advocates learn from consumer protection at the ISO?” Australian Journal of Human Rights 28(1), 40-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238X.2022.2094214 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2022) “L’État, c’est Moi? Towards an Archaeology of Sovereignty in the Western Episteme(s).” Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science 12, 1-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2022.i12.04 (special issue on ‘Michel Foucault and the Historiography of Science’)
• Ramírez-Gutiérrez, C. & Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2022) “Shredded: Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace in an Increasingly Illiberal Context of Misinformation and Backlash.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 20(1), 139-166. https://doi.org/10.1093/jicj/mqac002 (special issue on ‘International Criminal Justice in an ‘Age of Misinformation”)
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2021) “Beyond Texts? Towards a Material Turn in the Theory and History of International Law.” Journal of the History of International Law 23(3), 466-500. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340172 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2021). “Vicarius Christi: Extraterritoriality, Pastoral Power, and the Critique of Secular International Law.” Leiden Journal of International Law 34(3), 629-652. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0922156521000285 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D.R. (2021). ‘All’s Fair in Love and War Imperial Gazes and Glaring Omissions at the Expositions Universelles (1851–1915).’ Cognitio – Studentisches Forum für Recht und Gesellschaft, 2021/1: 1-15. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4494091   
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2020). “Normalising Global Commerce: Containerisation, Materiality, and Transnational Regulation (1956-1968).” London Review of International Law 8(3), 457-477. https://doi.org/10.1093/lril/lrab003 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2020). “Domains of Objects, Rituals of Truth: Mapping Intersections between International Legal History and the New Materialisms.” International Politics Reviews 8(2), 129–51. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41312-020-00083-w. 
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2019). “La Sociedad Civil vestida con Piel de León: La Cuestión de la Cuestión Judía.” UNA Revista de Derecho vol. 4(1), 1-21 (ISSN 2459-5354).
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2019). “’An Atmosphere of Genuine Solidarity and Brotherhood’: Hernán Santa Cruz and a Forgotten Latin American Contribution to Social Rights.” Journal of the History of International Law vol. 29(1), 71-103. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340103 
• Quiroga-Villamarin, D. R. (2018). “Historia Conceptual de la Justicia Transicional: Contextualizando el Caso Colombiano.” Revista – Asociación Cavelier del Derecho vol. 3(1), 44-69 (ISSN 2539-2859).
• Quiroga-Villamarin, D. R. (2016). “Recontextualizando la Globalización: El “espacio intermedio” de la Sostenibilidad Fiscal en Colombia.” Anuario de Derecho Constitucional Latinoamericano 2016, 547-570. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. (ISSN 2346-0849)
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (in press). “‘Keynesian’ Shipping Containers? Transnational Maritime Regulation before the advent of ‘Neoliberalism’” in Panagiotis Delimatsis, Stephanie Bijlmakers, & Konrad Borowicz (eds), The Evolution of Transnational Rule-Makers through Crises (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, expected publication date July 2023).
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (in press). “Historia(s) del Derecho Internacional Público” 1-32 in Laura Galindo, Natalia López & René Urueña (eds), Derecho Internacional: Conceptos, Doctrinas y Debates (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2023).
• León-Marín A. & Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. (2022). “Las Armas y las Leyes: Historia(s) del Derecho Internacional Humanitario” 27-50 in Edgar Solano-González, Manuela Losada-Chavarro, & María Alejandra Osorio-Alvis (eds.) Aproximaciones, Reflexiones y Críticas Preliminares sobre el Derecho Internacional Humanitario – Tomo 1 (Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2023). ISBN 139789587909722.
• Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. “From Speaking Truth to Power to Speaking Power’s Truth: Transnational Judicial Activism in an Increasingly Illiberal World” 125-150 in Cynical International Law? Abuse and Circumvention in Public International and European Law edited by Baade, B., Burchardt, D., Feihle, P., Köppen, A., Mührel, L., Riemer, L., Schäfer, R., 111-133 (Berlin: Springer, 2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62128-8_7 
• Amaya-Castro, J. M. & Quiroga-Villamarín, D. R. “Derecho International Económico y Migración” 293-357 in Enrique Prieto-Ríos & René Urueña (eds), Debates Contemporáneos de Derecho Internacional Económico (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes & Ediciones Universidad del Rosario, 2020). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1g6q8bt.11

Academic Work Experience

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant at the Graduate Institute's International Law department

Adjunct Lecturer at Sciences Po Nancy

Fellowships, Grants and Awards

I was awarded a Doc.CH fellowship from the SNSF for my doctoral project (P0GEP1_200077/1 - CHF 226,962).
2020 Mariano Garcia Rubio Prize for best master's mémoire

During the 2021–2022 academic year, I was also a Schindler Junior Fellow at the Institute for International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law – University of Zurich and a Cold War Archives Research (CWAR) Institute Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

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