Prof Rain Liivoja
Prof Rain Liivoja
Rain Liivoja is a Professor and Deputy Dean (Research) at the University of Queensland Law School, where he leads the Law and the Future of War research group. Rain is also a Senior Fellow with the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and holds the title of Adjunct Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki, where he is affiliated with the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights.
Rain’s current research focuses on the legal challenges associated with military applications of science and technology. His broader research and teaching interest include general international law, the law of armed conflict and human rights law. He is the author of Criminal Jurisdiction over Armed Forces Abroad(Cambridge University Press 2017), and a co-editor of Autonomous Cyber Capabilities under International Law (NATO CCDCOE 2021), the Routledge Handbook of the Law of Armed Conflict (Routledge 2016) and International Law-making: Essays in Honour of Jan Klabbers (Routledge 2013). Rain is a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies (published by Brill | Nijhoff).
Rain is a UQ Ally, a UQ Mental Health Champion and a member of the UQ Disability Inclusion Advocacy Network. He is the Deputy Chair of the Queensland Divisional Advisory Board of the Australian Red Cross.
Before joining the University of Queensland, Rain held academic appointments at the Universities of Melbourne, Helsinki and Tartu. In 2022–2023, he was a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has also been a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, the University of Oxford and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, and a visiting lecturer at the Estonian Military Academy and the Riga Graduate School of Law. Rain holds an undergraduate degree in law from the University of Tartu, and a masters and a doctorate in public international law from the University of Helsinki. He completed a Graduate Certificate in University Teaching at the University of Melbourne.
Articles of War Posts
