Dr. Kirsten Ainley is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is principal investigator on the Hybrid Justice project, and on the ESRC Conflict, Justice and Development project, researching the links between transitional justice and development in Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria and Uganda. Her research is in the field of global ethics and is concerned very broadly with relationships between politics, law and ethics in international relations. She focuses on the history and development of international criminal law, human rights and humanitarian intervention and has published on international criminal law, transitional justice, the International Criminal Court, the Responsibility to Protect and the notion of evil in international relations in journals such as International Journal of Transitional Justice, Ethics and International Affairs, London Review of International Law, International Affairs and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. She is the co-author, with Chris Brown, of Understanding International Relations (2009) and co-editor (with Rebekka Friedman and Chris Mahony) of Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone (2015).

Ainley has a PhD and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Selected Publications 

• Evaluating the Evaluators: Transitional Justice and the Contest of Values. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2017, 11 (3): 421-442.
• From Atrocity Crimes to Human Rights: Expanding the Focus of the Responsibility to Protect. Global Responsibility to Protect, 2017, 9 (3): 243-266.
• Ainley, Kirsten, Rebekka Friedman, & Chris Mahony (ed.s), “Evaluating Transitional Justice: Accountability and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone,” Palgrave, 2015.
• The Responsibility to Protect and the International Criminal Court: Counteracting the Crisis, International Affairs 2015, 91 (1): 37-54.
• Excesses of Responsibility: the Limits of Law and the Possibilities of Politics, Ethics & International Affairs 2011, 25 (4): 407-431.
• The International Criminal Court on Trial. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2011, 24 (3): 309-333.