Aularian awarded Oxford Nicolas Berggruen Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy, Law & Politics 2023

On 1 June 2023, the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford announced Teddy Hall alumna Dr Katie Johnston (2018, DPhil Law) as the winner of the Oxford Nicolas Berggruen Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation in Philosophy, Law & Politics 2023.

The prize recognises her dissertation ‘The impact of the coexistence of multiple norms from different sources of international law on change to the jus ad bellum’ and is currently being transformed into a monograph for publication.

On hearing she had won the prize, Katie said:

“I am honoured to be awarded the Oxford Nicolas Berggruen Prize and grateful to everyone at Oxford and beyond who supported me throughout my DPhil research. It is important that when states claim to be using military force against other states in accordance with international law these legal claims are subject to rigorous scrutiny – particularly where they are based on novel or controversial analyses of the law. I hope that my thesis has contributed to clarifying the complex international legal framework that regulates the use of force by states, so that such claims of lawfulness can be properly evaluated.”

Katie read DPhil Law at St Edmund Hall and is now a Lecturer in Law at the University of Liverpool. Her DPhil research was funded for all three years by a postgraduate scholarship from Teddy Hall – the MCR 50th Anniversary Award – alongside an Art and Humanities Research Council doctoral studentship. She comments “I am very grateful to the Hall for its generous support for my research.”

This prestigious prize is generously funded by Nicolas Berggruen of the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. Each year the prize is awarded to the work that is both excellent and transformative in either theory or practice. One dissertation is nominated by each of the three faculties in Oxford (Philosophy, Law, and DPIR) every year, and then selection of the prize dissertation is made among the three highly impressive nominees by a committee constituted by the terms of the prize.

Find out more about Katie’s dissertation via the Oxford Law Faculty Press release. Some of this news article text has been taken from the Law Faculty’s Press Release.