Nicola Palmer

Dr. Nicola Palmer is a lecturer in criminal law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. She was previously the Global Justice Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford and convenor of Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR), an inter-disciplinary network working on issues of transition in societies recovering from mass conflict and/or repressive rule, housed in the Centre for Criminology.

Nicola’s broad research interests are in international criminal law, transitional justice and the compatibility of plural responses to violence. Her current research, and forth-coming monograph, focuses on criminal justice in post-genocide Rwanda, examining the interactions among international, national and localised criminal courts. She has published on the transfer of cases from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to the Rwandan national courts and the domestic interpretations of international law in Rwanda. As a research associate of the Centre, Nicola has recently completed an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project, in collaboration with OTJR and Dr. Briony Jones at swisspeace, on the methods used to formulate, implement and assess transitional justice processes.

Nicola received her D.Phil in law from the University of Oxford in 2011. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, she worked as a legal assistant at the ICTR, having completed her undergraduate and honours degrees in law and economics at Rhodes University, South Africa. She was an American Society for International Law Helton Fellow in 2009 and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 2007.