Profile
PhD, Leiden University
Dr Janne E. Nijman is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute since January 2020. She is also Professor of History and Theory of International Law of the University of Amsterdam (on leave) and affiliated with the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). She is the former chairperson of the executive board and academic director of the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague. Nijman’s main research interest concern the history and theory of international law, questions of subjectivity in international law more generally, and the role of cities in international law and global governance. On the latter topic, she published the Research Handbook on International Law and Cities (2021) co-edited with Helmut Aust (FU Berlin), which has been awarded the ESIL Collaborative book prize 2022. Together they are also co-chairing the ILA Study Group on the role of cities in international law. Nijman is an advisory editor of the London Review of International Law.
Nijman is a Senior Fellow visiting the Research Group ‘The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline?’ at Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam in 2023. During Michaelmas Term 2022, Janne was a visiting fellow at both Lauterpacht Center for International Law and Jesus College in Cambridge, UK.
Janne Nijman is a member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), an independent body which advises the Dutch government and parliament on foreign policy, and chair of its permanent Committee on Human Rights (2023-2026). She is a member of the supervisory board of VU University in Amsterdam and chair of the supervisory board of World Press Photo.
Janne Nijman studied law at the University of Leiden (Meester in de Rechten, 1996) and the Université Robert Schuman in Strasbourg. She defended her doctoral thesis in public international law at Leiden University in 2004. Previously, Nijman has been a post-doc researcher in the ACIL-based NWO Pioneer Project "The Divide and Interaction between National law and International Law" (2004-2005). Subsequently she worked as assistant and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam until she took up the chair of history and theory of international law in 2015. From 2007-2014, she has been Dean to the Law Faculty's PhD Candidates. Janne has been a Global Research Fellow of New York University School of Law (2003-04), affiliated to the IILJ’s History and Theory of International Law Program, an Early Career Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary College School of Law in London (summer 2006), and a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Institute for Policy Research (Spring term 2012). She was a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in 2017-2018.
