Rate My Professor Jean Allain

Jean Allain is Professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law at Monash University, where he joined in 2017. He has served as Associate Dean, Research from 2018 to 2020, and Associate Dean, International from 2021 to 2023. Allain received his Doctorate from the Graduate Institute for International Studies, University of Geneva, undertaking research at the Peace Palace Library in The Hague as a Grotius Research Fellow with the Asser Institute. He wrote his Masters thesis at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica as a Fellow of the Organization of American States and clerked for Antonio Cassese, the first President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He began his academic career at the American University in Cairo, followed by Queen's University Belfast, prior to his appointment at Monash University.

Allain's research interests encompass public international law, human rights law, humanitarian law, slavery, forced labour, law of the sea, economic, social, and cultural rights, legal history, right to food, right to housing, and right to health. He is the leading legal scholar on issues of human trafficking and modern slavery. His key publications include 'Slavery, trafficking, and the law' (2024) in Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking; 'Confronting the business models of modern slavery' (2022) in Journal of Management Inquiry; 'Slavery, slave trade, servitude and forced labour, prohibition of' (2022) in Elgar Encyclopedia of Human Rights; 'Homelessness and human rights in Australia' (2021); and 'Slavery in International Law: Of Human Exploitation and Trafficking' (2013). Allain has held positions as Extraordinary Professor with the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria since 2008; Professor of International Law at the Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull from 2017 to 2021; Special Adviser to Anti-Slavery International from 2015 to 2019; Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham in 2023 and 2024, delivering lectures on the early international anti-trafficking framework; Adjunct Professor at Universitas Padjadjaran since 2023; and Rights Lab Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of Nottingham since 2025.