Miriam Cohen

Miriam Cohen holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and International Reparative Justice. She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at the Université de Montréal, where she teaches courses in public international law, international human rights law, and international criminal justice. Professor Cohen earned her doctorate in international law from Leiden University in the Netherlands. She pursued graduate studies at Harvard Law School, where she was awarded the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship (granted by Harvard University) and the John Peters Humphrey Fellowship (awarded by the Canadian Council on International Law). She also holds an LL.M. from the University of Cambridge (as a Rt. Honourable Paul Martin Sr. Scholar), as well as both an LL.B. and an LL.M. from the Université de Montréal. She was elected to the Global Young Academy in 2024.

Recipient of numerous awards and research grants - including from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Bar Association and the Fonds de recherche du Québec - she collaborates with several interdisciplinary and international teams. She received the Scholarly Book Award from the Canadian Council on International Law and the Legal Writing Prize from the Quebec Bar Foundation for her book Realizing Reparative Justice for International Crimes: From Theory to Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2020). She has published over forty articles and book chapters in leading publications across the globe, and she is also co-author of the third edition of Précis de droit international public with Professor Stéphane Beaulac (LexisNexis, 2021).

At the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law, she leads research projects in international law and human rights. She is also the founder of the Human Rights and International Justice Lab, where she directs interdisciplinary research teams that have developed a technological platform specialized in the review and analysis of human rights data. This large-scale project, conducted in partnership with the Centre d’expertise numérique en recherche (CEN-R) at the Université de Montréal, was awarded a grant by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) through the John R. Evans Leaders Fund, as well as a second grant from the Government of Quebec to build the digital research infrastructure, totalling nearly $400,000 for Phase 1.

Before entering academia, Professor Cohen gained extensive experience in international organizations. She worked in the legal department at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and previously at the Appeals Chamber and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). She has also served as a researcher at Harvard Law School, a rapporteur for an expert committee on a draft convention on crimes against humanity, and a member of an international delegation during United Nations treaty negotiations in Geneva. As an expert in international law, she has acted as Legal Counsel before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Hamburg). A member of the Quebec Bar and an accredited mediator, she has also been involved in a Supreme Court of Canada intervention and served as amicus curiae before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Professor Cohen is regularly invited as a consultant, speaker, and trainer. She is Assistant Editor of the Canadian Yearbook of International Law and Vice President of the Société québécoise de droit international. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law, Lawyers Without Borders Canada, and the Réseau francophone de droit international. She is an affiliated researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public (CRDP), the International Centre for Comparative Criminology (CICC), and the Centre for International Studies and Research (CÉRIUM), and a member of the Hygeia Observatory, where she leads initiatives on international legal issues.

Originally from Brazil, Professor Cohen works in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French, and has working knowledge of Italian and Dutch.

This content has been updated on 16 June 2025 at 11 h 20 min.