Rate My Professor Olympia Bekou

Professor Olympia Bekou is Professor of Public International Law and Head of the School of Law in the Faculty of Law at The University of Nottingham. She also heads the International Criminal Justice Unit of the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre. Olympia read law at the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece and was admitted to the Greek Bar in 2000. She completed an LLM in International Law at the University of Cambridge and obtained her PhD in International Criminal Law from the University of Nottingham, for which she received a NATO Fellowship. She joined the School of Law in September 2002 and teaches International Criminal Law and Public International Law. Over her career, she has held a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany, and visiting positions at the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland, Australia, the University of Nantes, France, and Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. She has presented research in over 40 countries and delivered lectures at numerous expert meetings, workshops, and conferences worldwide.

Professor Bekou's research specializations include international criminal law and justice, complementarity, cooperation, capacity building, and conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence. She has provided research and capacity-building support to 63 states, intensive training to more than 75 international government officials, drafting assistance to Samoa (with legislation enacted in 2007), Fiji, and Jamaica, and training to the Thai judiciary. She has conducted field missions in post-conflict settings such as Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. As the sole creator and maintainer of the National Implementing Legislation Database for the International Criminal Court's Legal Tools Project, she also developed the Cooperation and Judicial Assistance Database. She serves as Deputy Director of the Case Matrix Network, Editor of the Forum for International Criminal and Humanitarian Law, and board member of NGOs Civitas Maxima and Global Justice and Research Project, contributing to the establishment of a War and Economic Crimes Court in Liberia. Her key publications include editing 'Cooperation and the International Criminal Court: Perspectives from Theory and Practice' (Brill Nijhoff, 2016) and chapters on ICC procedures in the 'Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Observers’ Notes' (3rd ed., 2016). She authored expert studies for the European Parliament in 2014 and 2020 on ICC support and impunity instruments. Professor Bekou has led major grants from the EU, ESRC, and others, including a 2013-2016 EIDHR project on enhancing the Rome Statute system. Her contributions earned University of Nottingham Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Awards in 2008 and 2014, and recognition as an ESRC Impact Leader in 2015-2016.