Prof Terry D. Gill

Terry Gill Bio Photo

Prof Terry D. Gill

Guest Author

Terry D. Gill, BA 1981, LLM 1984, PhD (cum laude) 1989, is Professor Emeritus of Military Law at the University of Amsterdam, having held the chair from September 2001 until September 2020. Between September 2005 and July 2019 he also held the chair of military law at the Netherlands Defence Academy. Prior to that he was first Assistant and later Associate Professor of Public International Law at Utrecht University from July 1985 to February 2013,  combining all three functions for the years between 2001 and his departure from Utrecht University in February 2013. Professor Gill was co-founder of the Research Forum on the Law of Armed Conflict and Peace Operations and was director of the Research Program on the Law of Armed Conflict and Military Operations within the Amsterdam Center for International Law until his retirement and now remains active as a senior fellow in both of those platforms. He is also founder and co-chair of the Research Network on the Law of Armed Conflict and Military Operations in which some 21 universities, military academies, and staff colleges participate.

Professor Gill was editor-in-chief of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law between 2012 and 2022 and is a member of the editorial boards of The Military Law Review (Militair Rechtelijk Tijdschrift), the Journal of Armed Conflict & Security Law and the Journal of International Peacekeeping. He is a Board Member of the International Society for Military Law & the Law of War (ISMLLW). He has been a visiting fellow at Columbia University in New York, the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge, UK, and the Institute for International Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy. He was counsel and advocate to the Government of Albania in the proceedings before the International Court of Justice in the Advisory Opinion on the Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence with Respect of Kosovo.

Professor Gill was a member of the expert group on “Direct Participation in Hostilities” convened by the ICRC and TMC Asser Institute between 2003 and 2008, and of the International Group of Experts engaged in the drafting of the Tallinn Manual on International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (2013) and the Tallinn 2.0 Manual on the Application of International Law to Cyber Operations (2017), both of which were drafted with support of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) between 2010 and 2017. He co-edited and co-authored the Handbook of the International Law of Military Operations, published by Oxford University Press (2010, 2nd ed. 2015). He was Chairman of the Study Group of the International Law Association on the Conduct of Hostilities in the 21st Century (2009-17) and was Senior Academic Advisor, General Editor, and member of the expert group which drafted the Leuven Manual on the Application of International Law to Peace Operations sponsored by the ISMLLW and published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.

He is currently member of the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association on the topic of intervention at the invitation or consent of States. He is a legal consultant to the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, Finland. He was member of the Advisory Council on Matters of Public International Law to the Netherlands Government and Parliament (2009-2015) and co-authored advisory reports   on a variety of subjects including digital warfare, the use of armed drones, and autonomous weapons systems. He co-teaches courses in the law of armed conflict, military operations, and  supervises master theses and PhD dissertations.  He has published widely on topics relating to the use of force, law of armed conflict, and military operational law and is frequent guest speaker at universities inside and outside the Netherlands. Professor Gill was awarded the distinction of “Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau” by HM the King of the Netherlands in September 2019 for his services to the armed forces and society through his contribution to the international law of military operations.

Articles of War Posts