Ryan Liss

Ryan Liss is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. During the 2026-2027 academic year he will be the Smithies Visiting Fellow at Balliol College and a Visiting Research at the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights. His research focuses on public international law (including international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law) and criminal law, examining the ways in which human rights construct and constrain state power in both areas. His work has appeared in leading journals including the American Journal of International Law, Jurisprudence, the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, the Virginia Journal of International Law, and the Michigan Journal of International Law. 

Liss holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts and a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Laws and a Doctor of Juridical Sciences from Yale Law School. Prior to joining the University of Western Ontario, he served as an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, and as a visiting fellow at the Schell Centre for International Human Rights at Yale Law School and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. He has previously worked with the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Coalition for the ICC. 

During his time at the Bonavero Institute, Liss will be working on his forthcoming book on the history and theory of international criminal law, which is under contract with Oxford University Press.