Session with Matiangai Sirleaf

Session Description

Professor Matiangai Sirleaf is an interdisciplinary international scholar, justice seeker, and human rights advocate who works to unearth unjust hierarchies embedded in international law and to remedy emerging and persistent inequities. She is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She holds a secondary appointment as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Professor Sirleaf has published widely and extensively. Her current project is focused on race and the histories of international human rights. The book manuscript is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press: There Are Black People in the Past: Reclaiming Our Time in Human Rights. She is the editor of the first thematic print volume on Race & National Security (2023) with Oxford University Press, which top scholars have favorably reviewed. Sirleaf’s scholarship is featured in leading law reviews, in peer reviewed journals and in textbooks. Professor Sirleaf is an engaged scholar who also frequently publishes essays, op-ed commentary, reflections and podcasts. The strength, breadth and depth of her scholarship has resulted in several leadership positions, including executive editor at Just Security and membership on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law. Sirleaf’s interdisciplinary expertise is frequently sought after globally through invited keynotes, plenary panelists presentations, and lecture invitations. She has also been recognized with multiple awards, fellowships and grants throughout her career, including as a fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 2023. Professor Sirleaf’s commitment to social justice and human rights was most recently recognized by Public Justice, which awarded their team of attorneys with the 2024 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. Professor Sirleaf life’s work aims to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.