Associate Professor of Practice
B.A. Philosophy & Government, Cornell University, 1990
J.D., Harvard Law School, 1993
S.J.D., Harvard Law School, 2000
Vasuki Nesiah is a legal scholar with a focus on public international law. Currently her main areas of research include the law and politics of international human rights and humanitarianism, with a particular focus on transitional justice. Her past publications have engaged with different dimensions of public international law, legal history focused on colonialism and self-determination, the politics of memory, comparative constitutionalism, law and politics in South Asia and international feminisms. Prior to joining Gallatin she taught in the International Relations and Gender Studies concentrations at Brown University where she also served as Director of International Affairs. She has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and continues as core faculty in the summer workshop of the Institute for Global Law and Policy
at Harvard Law School. Before entering the academy full time, Nesiah spent several years in practice at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) where she worked on law and policy issues in the field of post-conflict human rights. She serves on the International Advisory Boards of the UK based journal,
Feminist Legal Studies and of the Institute of International Law and the Humanities at the University of Melbourne, and is an Associate Fellow with the Asia Society. Originally from Sri Lanka, she was a Visiting Student at Oxford University (1988-'89), completed her BA in Philosophy and Political Science at Cornell University (1990) and her JD (1993) and SJD (2000) at Harvard Law School; upon completion of her doctorate at Harvard she undertook a fellowship in human rights at Columbia Law School (2000-2001). She teaches human rights, law and social theory and international legal studies at NYU.
