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Staff Profile

Sara Vincenzotti

Lecturer in Law

Background

I am an intersectional feminist scholar specialising in international criminal law, sexual and reproductive violence, and decolonial feminist perspectives to gendered harms during mass-conflicts. My research is primarily on feminist approaches to international law, and how conflict-related sexual violence is categorised and prosecuted in international law as a crime of mass violence, such as genocide and crimes against humanity. I examine how gendered and racialised assumptions shape the construction of legal categories — who counts as a victim, what counts as harm, and which bodies are deemed worthy of legal protection. My most recent research project examines how international human rights law shapes, enables, and constrains reproductive justice through a comparative analysis of abortion governance in Ireland and forced sterilisation policies in Peru. I joined Newcastle Law School in September 2025, and I am a LLB and PhD Newcastle alumni.


Qualifications

PhD, Newcastle University (2026): 'Gender, Genocide, and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence through an Intersectional Feminist Lens: Redefining the Protected Groups'

LLM, Healthcare Ethics and Law, University of Manchester (2020)

LLB, Newcastle University (2019)

Advance HE Associate Fellowship - Awarded November 2024.


Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Criminal Law (Stage 2)

Tort Law (Stage 2)

Family Law (Stage 2 and 3)

Law and Gender (Module Leader 2025-2026, Stage 2 and 3)


Research

Research Interests

My research interests lie in critical feminist approaches to law, domestic and international criminal law, feminist approaches to human rights, gendered and reproductive violence, and issues on gender justice.


Conference Presentations

Newcastle University’s ‘At the Intersections’ Conference. Paper Presented: Using Intersectional Complexities to Deconstruct Conflict Related Sexual Violence (May 2023).

University of Liverpool’s Annual Postgraduate Conference in International Law & Human Rights: ‘Conflict & Contestation in International Law’. Paper Presented: The Feminist Paradoxes in Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. (July 2025).


Publications

  • Article

    • Vincenzotti S. 'Enforcing Motherhood, Suppressing Fertility: Reproductive Justice, Colonial Legacies, and the Limits of International Human Rights Law. Feminits@Law 2026. Submitted.

  • Book Chapters

    • Vincenzotti S. What Is In a Category?: An Analysis of Race and Gender under the Protected Groups of the Genocide Convention. In: Raj, S., Razi, S., and Morgan S, ed. Research Handbook on Race, Gender & Law. Edward Elgar, 2026. In Preparation.
    • Houghton R, Godden-Rasul N, O'Donoghue A, Vincenzotti S. Abolition Feminism and Utopian Justice: Speculative Visionary Fiction and the End of Gendered Violence. In: Godden-Rasul N; Kula L, ed. Research Handbook on Gender Violence and Law. Edward Elgar, 2025. In Press.