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Staff Profile

Dr Elena Katselli

Reader in Public International Law

  • Telephone: 0044-191-2087941
  • Address: Newcastle Law School
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
    UK
Background

Dr Elena Katselli joined Newcastle Law School as lecturer in 2005 and she is now Reader in Public International Law.


Elena studied Law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, where she graduated in 1997. After training and qualifying as a lawyer in Cyprus and becoming member of the Cyprus Bar Council, she worked as an associate in the law firm of Michael Kyprianou & Associates during which time she worked on a number of high profile criminal cases (1997-1999). She subsequently embarked into post-graduate studies at the University of Durham obtaining a Master of Laws in International and European Legal Studies (2000) and, after being awarded a full scholarship by the Department of Law, a Doctorate in Public International Law (2005). Her doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Professor Colin Warbrick, was published by Routledge: Francis & Taylor Group (2010) and was re-printed in paper-back format in 2011. The book is entitled The Problem of Enforcement in International Law: Countermeasures, the Non-injured State and the Idea of International Community and was nominated for the Paul Guggenheim Prize 2011 (Instituut de Droit, Geneva). This work was one of a handful of books successfully nominated by Routledge in 2019 for Open Access funded by Knowledge Unlatched, enabling high-quality research to be accessed freely.


Elena's research leads international debates and helps shape international legal developments on the rights of forcibly displaced persons. For example, her edited book on Armed Conflict and Forcible Displacement: The Rights of Forcibly Displaced Persons under International Law was cited, a month after its publication, by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the proceedings concerning the alleged deportation of Rohingya from Myanmar (2018). Her research work on the right to return has played an instrumental role in the Prosecutor's innovative legal argument that because the right to return is a fundamental human rights, its denial may constitute a crime against humanity (2019). Not only this, her work on the rights of forcibly displaced persons led to an invitation by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees to join the Advisory Group of the United Nations GP20 Programme of Action on Preventing, Addressing and Resolving Internal Displacement; and to act as one of six Expert Advisors to review the report ‘Working Together Better to Prevent, Address and Find Durable Solutions to Internal Displacement: GP20 Compilation of National Practices’. This was a multi-stake holder project initiated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur Ms Cecilia Jimenez-Damary under the GP20 Plan of Action for Advancing Prevention, Protection and Solutions for Internally Displaced Persons. The report was launched in November 2020 (https://www.globalprotectioncluster.org/wp-content/uploads/GP20_web.pdf) and informed the work of the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement established by the United Nations General Secretary Mr Antonio Guterres. For more information on this work see: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/mediav8/law/files/research-briefings-pdf/Impact%20Briefing,%20Defending%20the%20Displaced,%20EKatselli.pdf

and https://www.ncl.ac.uk/law/research/impact/forcible-displacement/


Elena has also been offered a highly prestigious Visiting Professional placement in the Prosecution Division, Office of the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court which she undertook from September 2021 to January 2022. During her work in the Prosecution Division, Elena worked among others with prosecutors, investigators, and military analysts in shaping, advancing and implementing investigatory and prosecutorial strategies and in reforming policies on significant issues within the Court's remit. During her placement Elena made influential contributions accomplished through the undertaking of legal research on innovative legal questions and the formulation of legal opinions on how specific conduct could be investigated and prosecuted under international criminal law. Informed by her research and legal expertise, such contributions helped reform the ICC Prosecutor's Policy on Gender-Based Violence adopted in 2023. Elena's legal analyses have a lasting impact on international criminal processes helping strengthening international criminal justice and how we respond to specific types of criminality affecting millions across the world.


Elena's legal analyses have also helped strengthen human rights protection before the European Court of Human Rights. For example, in 2019, Elena, together with her then Doctoral student, Raffaella D'Antonio, submitted a joint third-party intervention arguing that states bear legal responsibility for harm to human life caused by environmental pollution. The Court, in its judgment in Cannavacciuolo issued in January 2025 accepted the argument that states had a due diligence duty to protect the right to life even in the absence of scientific certainty between the harm caused and the pollution. This was the first time that the Court found a violation of the right to life, protected under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as a result of environmental pollution, while lowering the legal threshold that must be met by states in fulfilling their international human rights obligations.


Over the course of the years Elena has held visiting positions at the University of Trento, European Academy of Bolzano, University of Tuebingen, University of Queensland, University of Utrecht, while she was invited by Professor Yves Haeck and Professor Johan Vande Lanotte (former Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium) as a Foreign Research Fellow at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Belgium. She has also been offered a Visiting Scholar position at the Human Rights Center, Berkeley University.


Elena is leading the Joint University Study Tour for Newcastle University, a programme that allows post-graduate students to go to Geneva and join students from the Universities of West Indies, Ottawa, Carleton, Amsterdam, Geneva Graduate Institute and the European Public Law Organisation in Geneva. As part of the two-week programme, students visit international organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, the International Trade Center, the United Nations. Students also engage in trade negotiation simulation exercises, attend panel sessions given by trade experts, network with diplomats and policy makers and have opportunities to present their research and receive career advice. Following this, students undertake an internship with foreign missions based in Geneva for a week. For more info please see here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/law/study/student-life/student-experience/just-prog/

and  https://youtu.be/muSeEOk6oOw


Elena is currently in negotiations for a an immersion programme with the United Nations.



Research

Elena's research interests lie in the area of general international law, international human rights and international humanitarian law. Particular research areas on which Elena has published include the law on state responsibility, enforcement of international law through countermeasures, fragmentation of international law, community interests, gross human rights violations, accountability of international organisations, the legal limits of Security Council action, displacement as a result of armed conflict, property rights, joint criminal enterprise for genocide. 

Elena has also a strong interest in the nature and function of international law, responsibility to protect, international mechanisms of protection of the individual particularly within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, the law of armed conflict, international criminal law and territorial disputes.

Recently, Elena's article on The Right of Displaced Persons to Property and to Return Home after Demopoulos was published in Human Rights Law Review (2014) 14, 701-32.

Currently, Elena is working on a research project on just satisfaction for serious human rights violations.  

Elena has supervised Doctoral and M.Phil. students in the areas of self-determination (passed viva with no corrections), the use of armed force against non-state actors (passed viva with minor corrections), and the armed conflict in Lebanon. She is currently supervising Doctoral students on responsibility to protect, assisted suicide and the protection of children.

Elena has also supervised an LL.M. dissertation on the prohibition of torture which was published in Human Rights & International Legal Discourse. 

Elena has been invited to present her research works in conferences / workshops / seminars organised by the Association of Human Rights Institutes (2014 & 2011), the International Law Association (British Branch: 2014, 2006 & 2005) and (Belgian Branch: 2007), Human Rights Centre (Gent University: 2013), Law and Conflict at Durham (2012), Institute of Cultural Diplomacy (2011), Amnesty International (2010), Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law, TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Australia (2010), Exeter Law School (2008), Oxford Brooks University (2008), European Society of International Law (2004), Durham Law School (2004).

Elena has been a recipient of various scholarships / awards / grants for research such as the British Academy Small Research award (2010-12), the HaSS Faculty REF Award (2010) and Durham Law School (full scholarship for Ph.D. studies); for conference organisation / participation by the Modern Law Review (2008) (award given: £3,500), International Law Association (Belgian Branch) (2007) and (British Branch ) (2014, 2006 & 2005), European Society of International Law (2004); for summer course participation by Durham Law School (2002), Institute of International Public Law and International Relations of Thessaloniki (2003 & 2001).


Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Human Rights, Criminal Law.

Postgraduate Teaching

Foundations of Public International Law, International Criminal Law, Contemporary Problems of International Law & International Dispute Settlement.

Publications