Michelle Liu is the Deputy Director of the Human Rights Institute and an Adjunct Professor.

Professor Liu has taught international human rights law and advocacy at Georgetown Law since 2018. From 2018–2020, she was the Clinical Teaching Fellow and Supervising Attorney for the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic. From 2021–2022, Liu was the Dash-Muse Teaching Fellow with the Human Rights Institute and its Acting Deputy Director. She now co-teaches the Human Rights Advocacy in Action Practicum for upper-class J.D. and LL.M. students, as well as the Human Rights Associates Program for first-year J.D. students.

Professor Liu’s teaching and legal work focuses on protecting human rights through strategic litigation, legislative reform, and public advocacy. She has led or supported human rights field investigations with Georgetown students to the Bahamas, Botswana, Geneva, Kenya, Iraq, Malawi, and Tanzania. She and her students have worked with human rights NGO partners on a variety of issues, including to: protect the religious and cultural rights of Yazidi women and children in Iraq following the 2014 ISIS genocide; promote women’s sexual and reproductive health rights in Malawi; support human rights defenders against the authoritarian regime in Egypt; and seek reparations from France for its legacy of slavery and colonialism in Haiti.

Professor Liu has authored several amicus briefs, law review articles, book chapters, and online publications on the subject of women’s and children’s human rights. She is also the co-author of Women’s Human Rights: The International and Comparative Law Casebook (2^nd ed.), which is forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her research and writings have been cited in judicial opinions, including by the Malawi High Court, and in legal publications, as well as contributed to meaningful legal change.

Prior to teaching at Georgetown, Liu was a National Political Coordinator for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a corporate attorney with Linklaters LLP in London, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya.

Liu is a double Hoya and earned her J.D. in 2013 and her LL.M. in Advocacy in 2020. She was a Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow from 2018 to 2019.