Kristin Bergtora Sandvik

Julieta Lemaitre

It’s our great pleasure to welcome Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Julieta Lemaitre as IntLawGrrls contributors.  Kristin is senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Director of the Norwegian Center for Humanitarian Studies.   Her research on internally displaced women in Colombia takes a socio-legal and ethnographic approach to the study of how human rights and humanitarian law shape the everyday life of marginalized groups living at the edge of on-going conflict.  Kristin also researches emergent military and humanitarian technology, focusing on what tomorrow’s armed conflicts and relief operations will look like, and how we can assess the implications for international law and the future of humanitarianism.

She holds a law degree and a Master’s Degree in Women’s Law from the University of Oslo and an SJD from Harvard Law School.  Her doctoral dissertation was “On the Everyday Life of International Law: Humanitarianism and Refugee-Resettlement in Kampala”.   Kristin has also been a visiting researcher at the Oxford University Refugee Study Centre and at the Refugee Law Project, Makerere University, Uganda. Previously, she was as a children’s rights activist with Save the Children, PRESS, and ECPAT. She is currently a board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) and on the editorial board of Security Dialogue.

Julieta Lemaitre is Associate Professor at the Universidad de los Andes Law School in Bogotá, Colombia.   Her research focuses on law and social movements, law and violence, and sexual and reproductive rights.  Julieta’s current research project explores the intersection of law, social movements, and violence in Colombia through grassroots organizing of internally displaced persons and the impact of violence, especially drug-related violence, on grassroots organizing.

She holds a law degree from the Universidad de los Andes, as well as an MA from New York University and an SJD from Harvard Law School.  Julieta’s publications include  El Derecho Como Conjuro (Casting Law as a Spell 2009,) Derechos Enterrados (Buried Rights, edited 2010,) La Paz en Cuestión (The Peace at Hand, 2011) and La Quintíada (forthcoming 2013).