Dr Kasey McCall-Smith

Dr McCall-Smith is a lecturer in Public International Law and Programme Director for the LLM in Human Rights. She is a US qualified lawyer where she practiced for several years before moving to academia. She holds a BA in Architectural Studies (1998) and Juris Doctor (2001) from the University of Arkansas. Dr McCall-Smith was awarded an LLM (2002) and a PhD (2012) for her thesis on 'Reservations to Human Rights Treaties' by the University of Edinburgh. She joined the Law School on a permanent basis in 2014.

Her research interests include: the law of treaties; treaty implementation and interpretation in national legal systems; the role of treaty bodies in developing human rights law; and the link between customary and treaty law. She is also interested in the connections between public-private law governance of supply chains, particularly in the role of preventing modern slavery. She welcomes PhD research enquiries in across these areas. Recent and current research projects have included a number of edited collections, including V Ruiz Abou-Nigm, K McCall-Smith and D French (eds), Linkages and Boundaries in Private and Public International Law (Hart 2018) and K McCall-Smith, J Wouters and F Gómez Isa (eds), The Faces of Human Rights (Hart 2019). She is currently involved in a multi-year project examining variable international law issues relating to detention operations and military commissions in Guantánamo Bay as well as the implementation of children’s rights in Scotland.