The Senator George J. Mitchell Peace Lecture 2025

Speaker: Professor Sarah Nouwen, European University Institute

Chair: Professor Louise Mallinder, Queen’s University Belfast

Established in 2018, the Senator George J. Mitchell Peace Lecture Series celebrates and recognises Senator Mitchell’s contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process and to conflict resolution in the Middle East. His aim of transforming conflict and promoting social justice in Northern Ireland and across the world is shared by our Institute.

About the Lecture

In Northern Ireland, there is no need to explain that peace agreements can matter, a lot. To some scholars, the importance of peace agreements must mean that they are also legal instruments. But peace agreements concluded between a government of a state and a non-state actor (intra-state peace agreements) often do not easily fit in legal boxes. Scholars have come up with ingenious ways to capture these agreements in legal categories (legal encapsulation) or have emphasised how much they are like law (legalish).

In this Lecture, however, we’ll see that many intra-state peace agreements do not have legal status in and of themselves because they are, in the parties’ views, ‘too important to be law’ and that it may be dangerous to analyse them as law.

In its approach, then, this Lecture speaks to the importance of the Mitchell Institute’s type of interdisciplinarity: bringing disciplines in conversation, without giving up on the specialism – and standards – of each discipline.

Professor Sarah Nouwen

Sarah Nouwen is a Professor of Public International Law at the European University Institute. She is on leave from the University of Cambridge, where she is a Professor in Public International Law and was for many years Co-Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law and Fellow of Pembroke College. Nouwen is also Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law.

Prior to assuming her academic career, Nouwen worked in international diplomacy: at the Dutch mission to the United Nations, at the Netherlands Embassy in Khartoum, and as a Senior Legal Advisor to the African Union High Level Implementation Panel in Sudan. She also served as a consultant for the UK Department of International Development in Darfur.

With degrees in both law and international relations, Nouwen has published on international criminal law, transitional justice and international law more generally.

She is the author of Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Sarah’s article ‘As You Set out for Ithaka: Practical, Epistemological, Ethical, and Existential Questions about Socio-Legal Empirical Research in Conflict’ won the Leiden Journal prize for the best article published in 2013-2016. The Mitchell lecture is a part of her current research programme titled ‘Peacemaking: What’s Law Got to Do With It’?, which encompasses a course, articles and forthcoming books.

Professor Louise Mallinder

Louise Mallinder is Deputy Director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice and a Professor of Law and at Queen’s University Belfast. At the University of Chicago she is a Faculty Affiliate of the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts, and was the 2024 Pozen Professor of Human Rights. Louise holds a PhD in law, an LLM in Human Rights Law, and BA in Economic and Social History and Politics, all from Queen’s University Belfast. Her book Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions: Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008) was awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize and the Hart Socio-Legal Studies Association Early Career Prize. She is co-editing The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia on Law and Peace, and co-authored Lawyers in Conflict and Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Louise is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Higher Education Academy. She is also a member of the Institute for Integrated Transitions Law and Peace Practice Group, and of the ESRC and AHRC Peer Review Colleges. She was Chair of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a human rights non-governmental organization based in Belfast, during 2015-2020, and was Vice-Chair during 2013-2015 and 2020-2024.

Previous Lectures

The Fate of Civilians in War: The Effects and Effectiveness of International Conventions

Professor Neta Crawford

Balliol College, University of Oxford

February 2024

Human Rights, Justice and Negotiating Peace With Terrorists: The Case of Afghanistan

Mr Nader Nadery

Asser Institute, The Hague

October 2022

After Remorse, the Impossibility of Repair

Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Stellenbosch University and Mitchell Institute Honorary Professor

October 2020

Interconnectedness for Peace in Our Times

Dr Mamphela Rampele

Activist, Medical doctor, Academic, Businesswoman and Political Thinker

October 2019

Senator George J. Mitchell: A True Champion of Peace

Mary Robinson

Former President of Ireland UN Commissioner for Human Rights

November 2018