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Professor Jean Allain

Professor of Public International Law

Contact Details
Email address j.allain@qub.ac.uk
Telephone Direct Line  (+44) 028 9097 3445 
Room 203, 29 University Square

Degrees
BA, Carleton University
DPA, Laurentian University
MA, Brock University
DES, University of Geneva (HEI)
PhD, University of Geneva (HEI)

Biography

Prof. Jean Allain is a generalist in public international law with a specialisation in human rights and an expertise in issues of slavery and trafficking.

Jean Allain was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University of Belfast in 2004, as Reader in 2008 and Professor of Public International Law in 2011. He completed his studies at HEI – Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales – the Graduate Institute for International Studies of the University of Geneva, having received a PhD in 2000. He wrote his Master’s thesis at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in San José, Costa Rica, as a Fellow of the Organization of American States. While undertaking graduate studies in Geneva, he spent six months in The Hague, as a law clerk at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where he clerked for both the President of the Tribunal and the Deputy Registrar. In 1998, he was appointed Lecturer in Public International Law at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. In 2000, he became Assistant Professor; in 2004, Associate Professor.

In 2008, Prof. Allain was appointed Extraordinary Professor, Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa.  From 2010 to 2012 he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow.

Prof. Allain has published in a number of leading international journals including the British Yearbook of International Law, European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Refugee Law, and Human Rights Quarterly. He is author of The Slavery Conventions: The Travaux Préparatoires of the 1926 League of Nations Convention and the 1956 United Nations Convention (2008), International Law in the Middle East: Closer to Power than Justice (2004), A Century of International Adjudication: The Rule of Law and its Limits (2000), and editor Unlocking the Middle East: The Writings of Richard Falk (2003).

Jean Allain is a member of the International Editorial Board of the African Journal of Human Rights Law; and is Founding Editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law . Prof. Allain is an alumnus of both The Hague Academy of International Law and the Academy of European Law and acted as a consultant for various organisations including the International Labour Organisation and Anti-Slavery International.

Research

Where issues of slavery and human exploitation are concerned, Prof. Allain is the recipient of a 2009-2012 Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Network Grant to consider slavery as the ‘powers attaching to the right of ownership’. This grant will gather twenty academics and practitioners at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Conference Centre in the summer of 2010 and at Harvard University in 2011 so as to develop an understanding of the legal parameters of slavery. He also received a 2010-2012 Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to consider, with the assistance of Dr Marie Lynch, issues of human exploitation in domestic legislation and case-law which resulted in the creation of the Slavery in Domestic Jurisdictions database. In 2007 he received a British Academy Research Grant to conduct research at the United Nations Library in Geneva. Beyond articles and books in the area of slavery and human exploitation, Prof. Allain has published book reviews and case briefs in the area of human exploitation in the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Human Rights Law Review, International Journal of Refugee Law, International Labour Review, Medical Law Review, and the Melbourne Journal of International Law.

Prof. Allain would welcome PhD supervision in any area of public international law, including human rights law, humanitarian law and the use of force. Not surprisingly, he would be interested in supervising PhD related to issues of slavery and human exploitation.


Teaching

Undergraduate
• Public International Law

Postgraduate
• Human Rights in the Americas
• Human Rights and Exploitation

Research

Public International Law; International Criminal Law, International Human Rights Law; and Slavery, Human Exploitation and Human Trafficking.

 
Selected Publications


“Acculturation through the Middle Ages: The Islamic Law of Nations and its place in the History of International Law”, in Alexander Orakhelashvili (ed.), Research Handbook on Theory and History of International Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011, pp. 394-407.
 
“The Definition of Slavery in International Law”, (2009) 52 Howard Law Journal, 239;
 
“Nineteenth Century Law of the Sea and the British Abolition of the Slave Trade”, (2008) 78 British Yearbook of International Law 2007 342

“International Human Rights Law in Theory and Practice”, in Koen De Feyter and George Pavlakos (eds.) The Tension between Human Rights and Group Rights: A Multidisciplinary Approach (2008) 272;

“A Vindication of Palestinian Rights: The Written Statement Submitted by Palestine and the Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, (2007) 13 Palestine Yearbook of International Law 109;

“Slavery and the League of Nations: Ethiopia as a Civilised Nation”, (2006) 8 Journal of the History of International Law 213; and


Administration

Director, Human Rights Centre, 2011 - Present
Postgraduate Coordinator, 2008 - 2011