Q-IEL Lecture 2026

Speaker: Ntina Tzouvala (University of New South Wales)

The purpose of this talk is to articulate and attempt to answer a series of foundational questions concerning the study and practice of international law in the second quarter of the 21st century: Why did the US turn against the international legal order that had ushered into existence after WWII and, in particular, after the 1990s? What were the material and ideological factors that brought the seemingly inexorable march toward the legalisation of global capitalism to an end? Given the long-term trajectory of legalisation of global economic relations, this shift poses fundamental questions for international legal scholars of all theoretical and political orientations, since both our object of study and the world within which it operated have been transformed. Coming from within the critical legal tradition, I argue that the current moment necessitates a combined process of description, explanation and reorientation.

Dr Ntina Tzouvala is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Her scholarship focuses on the history, theory, and political economy of international law, with particular engagement in historical materialism, deconstruction, and feminist and queer legal theory. She is the author of Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2020), an influential monograph that received the 2022 ASIL Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship and the Australian Legal Research Award (ALRA) in the book category. The book was also shortlisted for the Deutscher Prize and received an honourable mention for the 2021 Sussex Prize in International Theory. Dr Tzouvala’s work has been widely published in leading international law journals, including the European Journal of International Law, the Leiden Journal of International Law, and the Journal of International Economic Law, reflecting her significant contribution to contemporary debates in international legal scholarship.

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