Dr Liana Minkova

Dr Liana Minkova is a Junior Research Fellow in Law at Newnham College, Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her PhD research project received a full funding award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Doctoral Training Partnership programme. She previously completed an MPhil in International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a BA in international politics at King’s College London. Liana has worked as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge and at King’s College London and delivered lectures on international law and international relations at Sofia University and the American University in Bulgaria. Her monograph Responsibility on Trial: Liability Standards in International Law will be published in a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press (2023). 

Research Interests

Liana’s postdoctoral research project explores the criminalization of environmental destruction in international law, focusing on the proposed new crime of ‘ecocide’. Specifically, her research looks at the exchange of ideas between legal experts in the process of constructing the definition of ‘ecocide’, the political and ethical implications of relying on existing international institutions to enforce the criminalization of ecocide, and the relationship between ‘law’ and ‘justice’ in the efforts to address environmental harm. Liana has also conducted research on the concept of individual criminal responsibility in international law, the boundaries of ‘culpability’ for mass atrocities, and the practices associated with the assessment of guilt and innocence at international courts and tribunals. Her other research interests include the expressive power of international criminal justice, gender in international relations and international law, and theories of international organization. 

Publications

L. Minkova, Responsibility on Trial: Liability Standards in International Criminal Law (Cambridge University Press, April 2023)

L. Minkova, ‘A Battle of Ideas: Modes of Liability and Mass Atrocities’, Law and Social Inquiry (forthcoming)

L. Minkova, Control over the Theory: Discussing the ICC’s Approach to Establishing Commission Liability (2022), International Criminal Law Review, 22(3), 510-538

L. Minkova, (In)Compatible Visions of Justice? Personal Culpability and Gender Justice at the ICC (2022), Politics & Gender 18(1), 62-94 

L. Minkova, The Fifth International Crime: Reflections on the Definition of ‘Ecocide (2021), Journal of Genocide Research, 1-22

L. Minkova, Expressing What? The Stigmatization of the Defendant and ICC’s Institutional Interests in the Ongwen Case (2021), Leiden Journal of International Law 34(1), 223-245 

L. Minkova, Jim Freedman, A Conviction in Question: The First Trial at the International Criminal Court Book Review, (2018), Journal of International Criminal Justice 16(3), 675-