Rebecca Hamilton

Rebecca Hamilton is an Associate Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law (WCL), and has spent her career working on atrocity prevention. As a 2020 CFR International Affairs Fellow, she served in the Office of Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict in the Department of Defense. She is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide, which analyzes citizen activism and the effort to stop mass atrocities. Her scholarship draws on her experience in the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as her work in conflict zones as a foreign correspondent.

Hamilton previously served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court. She is on the Editorial Board of the national security law publication, Just Security and is a faculty affiliate at WCL’s Tech, Law and Security Program. Prior to entering academia, Hamilton worked as a journalist for the Washington Post, and Reuters.  A Pulitzer Center grantee, she has been a fellow at New America and Open Society Foundations. She has appeared on PBS Newshour, NPR, CBS, BBC, and other media outlets. A proud first-generation high school graduate, she was born in Aotearoa NZ. She graduated from the University of Sydney, and received her J.D. from Harvard Law School as a Knox fellow. She is a member of the New York Bar, the American Society of International Law and the Council on Foreign Relations.