International Law, Humanitarianism, and Colonial Violence

Ian Caistor-Parker, The Treatment of Offenders Committee: development colonialism and metropolitan penal thinking in the British Empire c.1937-1961
Ian is a doctoral student at the University of Warwick. He is working on the history of punishment in Kenya and his paper will explore the ‘developmental approach’ to colonialism through the Treatment of Offenders Committee (TOC), between its inception in 1937 and its winding up in 1961.

Boyd van Dijk, The Algerian War of Independence and Inventing Third World International Law, 1954-1960
Dr. Boyd van Dijk is a Fellow in Nuffield College, the Faculty of History, and at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. His research interests include the history of international organizations, international law, and ideas of sovereignty. His most recent book, Preparing for War (Oxford University Press, 2022), presents a revisionist history of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. His new book presents a new global history of the practice of the Conventions in the Global South during the years between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s. His paper explores the role of the Algerian Revolution in reshaping the 1949 Geneva Conventions.