Zinaida Miller, J.D., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, International Law and Human Rights
School of Diplomacy and International Relations

Zinaida Miller is Assistant Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Her scholarship focuses on the conceptualization, management, and regulation of post-conflict and transitional territories and populations, particularly in the areas of human rights, humanitarian aid, and transitional justice. She analyzes cooperation and contestation among local and international legal regimes and experts in moments of conflict and transition, focusing on the reproduction of inequality and structural violence. Her current work examines temporality, international law, and accountability in relation to long-term racial and ethnic inequalities as well as recent conflict and atrocity. “The Injustices of Time: Rights, Redistribution, Race and Responsibility” (forthcoming, Columbia Human Rights Law Review) examines the uses of the past in legal struggles over rights, race, and redistribution in the United States, Canada, South Africa, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Miller’s publications include articles on the exclusion of economic issues from transitional justice, the influence of international ideas about law, humanitarianism, and development on Palestinian governance, and the intersections of time, law, and war crimes. Her co-edited collection, Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (with Karen Engle and Dennis Davis, Cambridge University Press), explored the increasing emphasis on punishment and prosecution in the human rights movement, particularly in states emerging from conflict.

Miller serves on the Advisory Council of Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy, where she was previously a Senior Fellow. She was co-Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group from 2017-2020. Prior to joining the School of Diplomacy, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Global Governance, funded by the Erin Jellel Collins Arsenault Trust, at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development. At the School of Diplomacy, she teaches courses in human rights law and policy, public international law, and international criminal law.