Francesco Romani

Dr Francesco Romani is a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy. He works on the IHL Expert Pool project and contributes to the Geneva Academy’s activities on evolving themes in international humanitarian law (IHL).

His research interests include IHL, international cultural heritage law, human rights law, international responsibility and litigation, and the theory of sovereignty.

Francesco is also a chargé d'enseignement at the Lille Catholic University. Prior to joining the Geneva Academy, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Art-Law Centre of the University of Geneva and Principal Investigator for the Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘The Temporal Dimension of Sovereignty in Light of the Restitution of Cultural Artefacts’. He also worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Customary International Humanitarian Law Project at the Lauterpacht Centre and was a Research Associate at Wolfson College (University of Cambridge). Francesco has conducted legal research in academic centres (Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Governance Centre) and policy-oriented organizations (Interpeace, Justice Rapid Response).

Francesco holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva. During his doctoral studies, he was a Grotius Research Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School and a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School. His research on belligerent reprisals and their formalization under international law will be published in Belligerent Reprisals from Enforcement to Reciprocity: A New Theory of Retaliation in Conflict (CUP, forthcoming).