Dr. Ioana Cismas
Dr. Ioana Cismas is the Co–Director of the Centre for Applied Human Rights and a Reader at the York Law School, University of York (UK).
An international law scholar, Ioana teaches, researches, and provides legal and policy advice in public international law, human rights law, international humanitarian law, law and religion, and transitional justice.
Her research explores through doctrinal, socio–legal, interdisciplinary, and empirical methods, the intersections between legal accountability and legitimacy in relation to a variety of state and non–state actors. Her projects have attracted substantial grants. Currently, Ioana leads the ESRC–funded research Generating Respect for Humanitarian Norms: The Influence of Religious Leaders on Parties to Armed Conflict – the Generating Respect Project – which draws on the theoretical framework developed in her monograph Religious Actors and International Law (OUP 2014).
In the past, Ioana lectured at Stirling Law School (2015–2017), was a scholar–in–residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the NYU Law (2014), and a research fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (2009–2013). In 2013, she served as consultant to the UN Special Rapporteur on transitional justice at the OHCHR in Geneva. From 2009–2012, she was legal advisor to a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council and drafted several studies for the Committee on the right to food and noma.
Ioana holds a PhD in International Law (summa cum laude) from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.